Question 12: Accountability and doing what you say you'll do

[richlay]

I have taken the opportunity of reviewing the manifestos of the 15/16 election (sadly there was no election in 16/17) and would want to question those that have stood since then around what they have done to back up what they said they'd do. The thread is now locked so I will have to use cut and paste.

Griff Grof in 15/16 wrote
"I feel that I would bring great enthusiasm, ambition and passion to the GAGB committee; I would endeavour to see the GAGB continue to grow and flourish: it would be great to raise its profile even further. I also would be happy to contribute and help in any way I can, whether on the web, by organising events or anything else. I also have several new ideas, one of which is the establishment of more regular, perhaps roving, GAGB events. In any case, I am certain that the committee will achieve many fantastic things in the coming year, and I would love to be a part of it - it would be an honour."

How do you feel you have delivered on that?

Abiherts in 15/16 wrote
"What can I offer the GAGB? I'm readily available whenever needed, I have excellent organisational and secretarial skills as I've worked as an outdoor journalist previously. I feel I have a good understanding of many aspects of geocaching and want to expand on this further in an official capacity. I'm keen to promote the GAGB as much as I can by any means possible. I still feel that not enough cachers are aware that the association even exists! If elected I will play a positive role within the GAGB using all of my skills that I have to help raise the profile of the association while assisting each and every individual cacher."

Does 2 meetings attended in a year reflect this statement? I struggle to find a yearly report in Seeker to show us what you have been up to this year.

Leonards193 in 15/16 wrote
"I would like to organise my first ever CITO event as a GAGB weekend one and I hope to be able to organise a couple of GAGB events over the next 12 months (pending the formula of the events being agreed by the committee). I hope to get to grips with developing land owner agreements too, something I have not done yet."

What has happened in two years that has prevented a GAGB CITO being organised, or a GAGB event?

UKCacheMag in 14/15 wrote
"If I am re-elected to the team then I hope to have a much more defined role and have something to work towards. "

But your yearly report, after a year as secretary says "Ihave found this to be adifficult year and havenot had anywhere nearthere time to spend on Gagbmatters" How do you rationalise this? How will you ensure you give the role the time that it demands this year, particularly if you took the very time intensive role on GLAD?

Ant in 14/15 wrote
"Finally, I would be looking for volunteers and helpers outside of the committee"

This is something that I have seen mentioned several times in this years manifestos and Q&As, what progress has been made?

[abiherts]

As mentioned in another thread I attended pretty much all the meetings in my first term as a committee member. This year there has been a lack of communication and I have been notified of meetings at short notice, and many of these have been on school event evenings. I did attend two weekends, away from my family, on behalf of the GAGB with Kim and worked on two issues of Seeker before having surgery with slow recovery. Now on the mend and with all children at the same school, I have more time to offer the gagb. Hopefully the communication issues from last year will be resolved too.

[richlay]

As mentioned in another thread I attended pretty much all the meetings in my first term as a committee member. This year there has been a lack of communication and I have been notified of meetings at short notice, and many of these have been on school event evenings. I did attend two weekends, away from my family, on behalf of the GAGB with Kim and worked on two issues of Seeker before having surgery with slow recovery. Now on the mend and with all children at the same school, I have more time to offer the gagb. Hopefully the communication issues from last year will be resolved too.

Is there a reason why meetings haven't been planned and diarised right at the beginning of the committee year?

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[border caz]

This was tried but, due to people being unavailable on specified dates due to other commitments or health issues, they sometimes had to be changed (a couple of times at short notice) to ensure that a quorum was available for the meeting.

[Griff Grof]

Griff Grof in 15/16 wrote
"I feel that I would bring great enthusiasm, ambition and passion to the GAGB committee; I would endeavour to see the GAGB continue to grow and flourish: it would be great to raise its profile even further. I also would be happy to contribute and help in any way I can, whether on the web, by organising events or anything else. I also have several new ideas, one of which is the establishment of more regular, perhaps roving, GAGB events. In any case, I am certain that the committee will achieve many fantastic things in the coming year, and I would love to be a part of it - it would be an honour."

How do you feel you have delivered on that?

I do feel I have brought enthusiasm to the committee. I have helped raise GAGB’s profile partly by posting on our social media channels as often as possible, and by creating a GAGB Instagram account, which now has 146 followers and 20 to 40 likes per photo. However, there is still a lot more to be done in this area.

I have contributed “on the web”. I authored six help pages which went live last year. Several others have been re-written and/or extended, and new ones have been created (e.g. Membership). I have also made minor changes where needed.

I have not delivered in terms of organising a GAGB event. I had a summer roving event planned for June, but this fell through due to unforeseen complications, following two months of communication with the city council. If re-elected, one of my top priorities would be to put this right by hosting a roving event of my own.

However, I am thrilled that my roving event idea has been put into practice. It has proven a success, with almost ten roving events held to date. These events have also helped raise the profile of the GAGB.

Another idea I had which has become a reality is the photo competition. I look forward to the official launch of this.

As promised, I believe that I have contributed and helped in other ways as well; I’ve written articles for Seeker (I was particularly involved in the publication of Seeker ‘17, along with Ant and Jamie, contributing photos etc.) and I have helped deal with a landowner enquiry, to name just a few examples.

So, overall I feel that I have largely delivered. To fully fulfil my promises, more work needs to be done on raising GAGB’s profile, and I need to organise a GAGB event. If re-elected, I would endeavour to do both, as I’m a strong believer that promises should not be broken.

[Antreid]

Yup I think I've had a heavy presence in reaching out to folks. In the last two years I've used the forums, Seeker, and especially Facebook to get help from geocachers and members - like finding people willing to talk to TV companies, like getting people to help at Mega events, like pointing geocachers to the right FB group (eg geocaching buddies, or regional groups, etc) to help them, and I think I answered more general enquiries than anyone in the last couple of years (a job that we should be sharing between us all).

What I have *not* done and wanted to do this past year was to get new GLAD arrangements sorted out - I nearly got one, which isn't exactly an achievement. I've decided I'm rubbish at that - I get so frustrated at the details and the niceties of following rules, I think - too much pirate in me? We need someone who is comfortable with sorting out what is right and wrong, and who takes details seriously. Then, reaching out to members to get new arrangements in place will become something we can all do.

[Leonards193]

As a host of one of the first roving events, which was pretty well attended for an outdoor event, I'd happily host another one. There was some debate about whether they could be hosted in pubs as opposed to outdoors, so I waited for a good opportunity, then the event didn't happen.

I will, no doubt, host another soon.

As for a CITO, I did host my first ever clear up event, again a very well attended clear up along a section of the River Frome in Yate, despite the council calling the day before to let me know all the equipment was in fact double booked and I couldn't have any grabbers etc... But crucially, they were still happy to pick up the rubbish.

Friends rallied round and we had a great event, despite the last minute worries.

This was organised as part of the Big Spring Clean. At the time of the GAGB cito weekend, I was otherwise committed to family stuff, family does come first, and like Arthur said, so many friends of the GAGB hosted CITO events, that I felt it wasn't as important for me to host one.

[UKCACHEMAG]

Without doing into too much detail - this year has been tough as I have had some pretty serious health issues, which hopefully are now behind me.

Making much more use of forums and sub committee chats between meetings will be one way of dealing with this.