Page 7 - Simply Vegetables Winter 2020/21

Sandra Hall opened the meeting on Oct 10th which was being held via a zoom meeting. She thanked everyone for attending the meeting and welcomed Gareth Morris of the Welsh branch to his first meeting.
It was agreed that certificates for the recipients of Fellowship Awards and medals would be sent out soon where requested. Note: some recipients have requested they be presented with their award in 2021.
As there was no AGM this year due to Covid 19, the Trustees, in line with the charities commission guidelines were required to minute any changes in officers. The following was noted in the minutes Agreed for re-election;
President – Medwyn Williams, Treasurer – J. Forrester, Assistant Secretary - Mark Hall SV Editor – Kelvin Mason Stood Down;
Web Master – Emily Plumb
Vacant positions;
Membership Registrar and Web Master
Both the above vacant positions are to be re-defined with a view to recruiting once the new White Fuse software system gets underway.
National championships 2021 - It was discussed that the Welsh Branch had voted not to host the National Championships
in 2021 in favour of their own Branch Championships planned for Wrexham. Long discussion led to actions for the Welsh branch to revisit this decision with a view to hosting the Nationals in Wrexham. Sadly, this did not materialize, and a further Trustee meeting was held on the 29th Oct. Rejected again by the Welsh Branch, the outcome of this meeting was that it was agreed by the Trustees that the National Championships will now be held Nr Shrewsbury on the weekend of 11th & 12th of September.
White fuse membership software update Fiona Shenfield had circulated a report prior to the meeting of which she went through via a presentation within the zoom meeting, including a live demonstration of how the new society website would look and work. Trustees were impressed by the new look website; It was noted that members could still pay membership manually by cash or cheque, but Direct Debit or on-line payments are preferred as this is quicker to process and less time consuming. The target date for the website to go live at the October 10th Meeting was the 31st October.
Simply vegetables magazine Plastic reduction was reported by Kelvin Mason.
It was reported that to replace the plastic SV Magazine envelopes with paper ones would increase the magazine cost by approximately 6p per copy. After discussion, Trustees agreed that we hold off implementing this as it is not a good time to introduce further costs to Branches after a) having reduced the SV costs and b) having little fundraising in
this Covid year. The Trustees will review this matter again in October 2021.
Sandra Hall has now completed the new Membership welcome packs. The folder will be ordered and will be made available for use in 2021 along with the various loose inserts for use by our Branches and DA’s.
A NVS zoom
account has now
been set up for Society meetings. It was noted that both the Northern and Southern Branches have also held successful zoom meetings.
Kitchen and leisure gardening - Ian Simpson had circulated a paper to all Trustees on the proposal for producing “growing booklets” (paper and electronic format) and welcomed views and feedback on the plan to progress this action.
External commercial sponsors and partners. Gareth Cameron pointed out
that it important that our members give us feedback on products that our sponsors have provide free of charge this is to ensure that our sponsors continue to support us and that they have useful feedback from our members.
As the Banksian medal issued by the RHS was not used in 2020 year with no National show, however the RHS had encouraged
all its affiliated Societies to still present it but used for a different purpose. The Trustees agreed that the medal should be awarded
to Raymond Higgins of Ireland for his enthusiasm and hard work in ensuring our virtual show was a great success this year.
Well done Raymond.
Amazon Smile: Fiona Shenfield had
circulated a letter from Amazon inviting
the NVS, as a charity to benefit from a 0.05% donation from Amazon on every purchase that someone makes when using amazonsmile should they choose the NVS as their chosen charity. Trustees agreed unanimously to go ahead with this. At time of writing this report, this has now been put in place, see article on page 33.
News from the Trustees
October 2020
MARK HALL BEM FNVS NATIONAL ASSISTANT SECRETARY
The following Trustee meeting dates were agreed for 2021
16th January 2021 – confirmed via zoom, 24th April 2021, 3rd July 2021 & 9th October 2021
It was suggested to consider that even without COVID, that the Trustees should consider utilising zoom as a regular meeting tool every year.
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