Page 40 - Simply Vegetables Winter 2021/22

NVS Membership Report
NORMAN DICKINSON FNVS
With the NVS Membership Registrar position being vacant for the past
12 months, I considered that it was essential that this role should be filled, especially after the rollout of the new on-line membership system, therefore I put myself up for election at the AGM held in September this year and was duly elected to the
role. I just hope that I can meet the expectations of our members.
I would like to thank Fiona Shenfield for all of the hard work and dedication that she has put into the acting Membership Registrar role, which is in addition to her appointed role of National General Secretary. I do know that both she and Ian Stocks have put a lot of time and effort in setting up the on-line system and on behalf of the general membership I give a big thank you to both of them.
new members joining at the various Shows and Events during 2020 and early 2021 where the NVS would have had a presence but were cancelled due to the ongoing pandemic. All we
need to do now is to retain these enthusiastic new members.
One of the downsides
to the pandemic has been the number of Societies and Organisations who have not renewed their membership of the NVS in 2021, mainly due to them being unable to put on
their Spring, Summer and Autumn shows, or to have the ability to hold their meetings. There are however a number of Societies or Organisations that have folded entirely from a lack of support in their communities. This is an unfortunate trend across
a number of organisations run by volunteers with either a lack of new blood coming in or people unable or unwilling to help at Committee level. We, therefore, have been fortunate to increase membership, but to put it into perspective, the membership numbers
are still down across all branches when compared to the beginning of 2019, so still a lot of work to be done.
The trend graphs below graphically illustrate the membership movement over the past three years and will
be presented quarterly in a rolling manner. The Branch and National quarterly trends are self-explanatory, as is the table detailing membership across all five branches. The pie chart graphically emphasises the fall in Society memberships with the Expired Memberships table showing the split across the Branches with the Northern Branch suffering most losses, closely followed by the Southern Branch.
There are plans under discussion with the Trustees to hold membership recruitment drives in 2022 and we
are hopeful that we can see a similar increase in membership as we did in 2021. More details will follow as we finalise the arrangements.
As I write this report at the beginning of November, manual renewals are now coming in from our members who traditionally pay by cash or cheque.
I can also report that we have had a number of members who have now
212
15 29
EXPIRED MEMBERSHIPS
n Single
n Education
n Society
n Society + 1 Medal
Over the past 11/12
months since the
introduction of the new
on-line membership
system, we have seen an
increase in membership
numbers, which has been
very welcome as numbers
have been declining over
the past few years. The
interest in growing that occurred during the early days of lockdown
as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic has been partially responsible for
the increase in numbers, but most significantly, the campaign where
NVS promotional flyers were sent
out with D.T.Brown seed catalogues generated the most interest, resulting in an almost constant stream of new members joining the Society for a two/ three month period. New membership as a result of this campaign also helped to offset the loss of potential
membership numbers are still down across all branches
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