Notes from the 2014 Annual General Meeting of ISBG

At the AGM on 29th July 2014 Carole Cilia was elected as Membership Secretary, to take over from Jo Hathway who resigned due to pressure of work. The Committee are extremely grateful to Jo for her work as Membership Secretary and welcome Carole, who moved to Scilly last September from Lancashire. The change in contact details have been uploaded to the Membership page of this website.
The AGM also agreed that Carole will take over from Paul Sterry as Report Editor for the 2015 issue. Carole is looking forward to meeting (or at least speaking to) all those who help produce the Report.
An additional role was created at the AGM – that of Assistant Recorder. John Headon was elected to that position and will assist Will Wagstaff (who remains as Recorder) with the collection, collation and analysis of records. This process will start later this year and you will be advised of John’s contact details, as he will then be the person to whom all records should be sent. A further development provisionally agreed at the AGM is to extend the responsibility of the Assistant Recorder to include all other Orders of wildlife. This will be a gradual process undertaken in conjunction with the relevant experts for each Order.
Perhaps the most important change agreed at the AGM concerns the subscription, which has remained at £12 for about 10 years now. Although the subscription remains at £12 this year, it will unfortunately be necessary to increase it to £15 next year (2015). This is due to ever-increasing costs – notably in the production and distribution of the annual report. I trust that you will want to continue to support the society despite this increase, which is only equivalent to the level of inflation over the last 10 years, and also in line with most other bird groups across the country.
Those of you who have the misfortune to pay tax may in future be able to help the Group increase its funds by signing a Gift Aid form. We are in the process of agreeing this with HMRC and will advise you of the outcome shortly. This has the potential to earn the Group £500 p.a. or more to spend on conservation on the islands.