The Hampshire Family Historian | Volume 51 No.1 | June 2024

HGS News

There is, of course, still time to purchase your ticket(s) for one or both days. You will not regret buying tickets! If you have read the timetables for the two days, I’m sure you will agree that it promises to be a weekend you will remember for a long time! Looking to the future, once the 2024 AGM and our ‘Golden Jubilee Event’ have passed, your Trustees and I will continue with the work we have already identified that needs to be completed with a view to bringing all the remaining outstanding tasks and issues up to date. To that end, I have already reinstated a top tier of management within Hampshire Genealogical Society, referred to by previous Officers as The Strategy Group. This Group will comprise Vice-Chair Kay Lovell, together with Secretary Jane Painter, our current Treasurer Ann-Marie Shearer, our newly-appointed Assistant Treasurer Debbie Painter, plus myself as Chairman. This small Group will meet periodically to discuss what we think can be done, or, needs to be done, to take the Society forward. Then, we’ll take our views to our Executive Committee for a deeper discussion and agreement by the other Trustees as to what exactly needs to be done, how best it can be done and by whom it will be done. More from me in later Journals but that work will include: - 1. We need to carry out a full Review of our pricing structure so that our costs in producing what we sell are not more than the prices we then sell them on for.

2. We need to carry out a full Review of our annual Membership Fees, to bring them in line with inflation and increased costs in running the Society since the last time those Fees were reviewed several years ago. We do fully appreciate that any increase in our members’ personal outgoings is always a difficult subject to deal with but, as Trustees charged by the Charity Commissioners with looking after the Society’s finances, we cannot knowingly allow the Society to slide into a possible situation where we could make a financial annual loss. 3. We need to have a full Review of the Society’s Website since its last review which was, again, several years ago. As part of this particular Review you, our members, will be canvassed over the coming months as to your thoughts and views on what you expect or would like from your Society’s Website. While I was writing this Report to you in late April, arrangements were already being put into place for these planned Reviews to start immediately after our ‘Golden Jubilee Event’ in July. Members of the respective Working Groups / Sub-Committees have already been appointed and the dates for their respective inaugural meetings have already been set. I expect to have news for you on the above Reviews in the September issue of this Journal, The Hampshire Historian. Finally, for now, because I do like to end on a positive note, I would like to draw your attention to another aspect of it being our ‘Golden’ Jubilee Year i.e., to remind you of the people who helped to bring Hampshire Genealogical Society into existence in the first

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