Page 7 - RSCDS Toronto Golden Jubilee Book

RSCDS Toronto Association – the more recent history
Although RSCDS Toronto Association is commonly called Toronto Branch by many of its members, it has in fact gone through two name changes since it was first founded in 1957 as the Toronto Branch of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society.
In 1992, the United Kingdom introduced charities legislation that affected the relationship between the Society
in Edinburgh and all of its branches. If the Society was to remain a formal charity, it was necessary for it to reor- ganize the relationship with its branches. In essence, the Headquarters/Branch relationship had to be terminated and former branches were to become autonomous entities, referred to as local associations. It was also necessary for the Society to revise its constitution to reflect these changes, and this was completed in 1996.
As part of the reorganization, the Society produced a new model constitution for the local associations. The then Toronto Branch consequently developed a modified constitution in line with the model. The revised constitution included a name change, making us the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society, Toronto Association. This was voted upon and accepted by our membership at the AGM on April 25, 1998.
During that same time period, we had seen rapid decline in our membership and many suggestions were forth- coming from our members on how to address the situation. One of the early papers, "A Publicity Plan," was pre- pared by Esther M. Goodfellow in April 1990. Subsequent papers and suggestions followed a similar pattern, but it was hard to enact and bring the suggestions to fruition. The suggestions of Esther’s plan included:
• prepare an information package
• publicize events to increase public awareness
• publicize and promote Branch Classes
• seek other opportunities for increased public awareness
• obtain tools to assist in pursuing the above
• make the Branch more visible at cultural celebrations.
Discussion and working groups kept reinforcing these same themes until, in 2000, the Toronto Association Executive recognized that to achieve the objectives, we required professional help and funding. Professional
help was brought in and a formal Business Plan was prepared. A request for a grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation was submitted. To request the grant required the Association to go through another constitution change. Grants were only considered for incorporated organizations so we had to change and become an incor- porated not-for-profit organization in Ontario. The aims and objectives of the Association and the relationship with the Society remained the same. However, as part of the incorporation we had to register our name and we were not allowed to use the word "Royal" in our name without extensive petitioning. Consequently we proposed a name change to "RSCDS Toronto Association." The name change and incorporation were approved at a spe- cial General Meeting in October 2001. The Association was subsequently successful in obtaining a $95,000 grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation payable over three years. With the aid of the grant, we were able to hire further professional help, purchase PCs and software, produce new advertising material and other documents and revamp our Newsletter, maintain better, more extensive records of our members and establish a flourishing Demonstration Team that is promoting awareness of the Association across our dancing area.
We now have many new members joining the Association each year and can look forward to a strong and healthy future as the RSCDS Toronto Association.
Keith Bark
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