It was great to see so many members and supporters of GCG at our AGM last Monday, 30th November. Due to the fact that the UK was under a national lockdown, we held this virtually, and, far from being a hindrance, it actually allowed many more people from farther afield to attend the meeting, in addition to our "regulars". Thank you to everyone who took the time to attend and contribute. We will be discussing as a committee if we can incorporate the virtual format into our real world meetings as we move forward.
We started the meeting with two interesting and informative talks, from Derek Leung (Edinburgh University) and Liz Hide (Sedgwick Museum, University of Cambridge). If you were not able to catch the talks live, they were recorded and you can access the recordings (you will need to be logged in as a GCG member) from the AGM pages on the website at www.geocurator.org/agm2020
We were then able to move to our 47th AGM - again if you missed any of this you can catch up with all the papers from the meeting using the link above. There have only been a few minor changes to the committee structure. The most important change discussed was the conversion of GCG to a CIO (Charitable Incorporated Organisation), and we're pleased to say that the members' vote on this passed with a large majority. This is a much more modern charity structure than the one used back in 1986 when GCG first registered as a charity. For instance:
- The CIO becomes a "body corporate" meaning it has a separate legal personality, and can hold accounts and enter into contracts in its own name. This to some extent protects the individual trustees of the charity in the event of problems.
- The constitution is much more thorough, and we have developed ours with only a few changes to the model constitution provided by the Charity Commission, which means that most eventualities are already covered, and it is easier to work with the constitution in future if changes are needed
- We are still governed by the Charity Commission, and there are plenty of resources available for training new and existing trustees. At the same time there are less obligations to deal with than, say, a charitable company.
This may sound like a huge change, and it will indeed be a lot of work for the committee to get it working. However from the point of view of our members, we hope it will be as smooth a transition as possible. There may be some small changes to be made, and we value your co-operation when these need to happen. To this end, we have set up a dedicated area on the website - please bookmark this page, and check back to see how we are progressing:
Finally we rounded off the evening with a quiz devised for us by committee member Zoë Hughes - we hope Jackie enjoys piecing together the 1000-piece William Smith jigsaw over Christmas and New Year!
Thank you to everyone who attended and engaged with the meeting, and a big thanks to Derek and Liz for their excellent talks!