Midlands National Flying Club – Presidents Report February 2019

On the 27^thJanuary 2019 the Midlands National Flying Club held its Annual General Meeting. The elected committee felt that it was vitally important to communicate to its members some of the key AGM items and outline the key areas of focus for the club and very importantly the financial challenges going forward.

The 2018 minutes were accepted and then the accountant gave a very detailed report of the Clubs financial position and after another challenging year racing there was another serious deficit on the racing account. The committee have taken this on board and will be working hard on initiatives to reverse this trend.  He then asked if there were any questions from the floor, there were none and the accounts were accepted.

Resignations, there were over 200 resignations which were accepted with regret, the committee are well aware of the general decline in pigeon racing and members leaving the sport, however we also know that some of our members were not happy about a number of different things within the Club and chose to leave. The committee discussed this issue at length on a number of occasions. Of course we cannot reverse the trend of people leaving the sport, but collectively agree that we should be doing everything possible to ensure that we have a better relationship and interaction with our members such that people feel more engaged and part of the future of the club.

To start this process this year for the first time we asked our members as part of the AGM paperwork about their views on a couple of issues. Our aim will be to continuously carry out this same process on a number of areas so that the committee have the memberships view on certain matters, which the committee can then consider when having to make decisions. I would ask as many members as possible to return any future question responses such that we have as wide opinion as possible.                                                                                                                                  

Question 1, Do you agree that the NC section should be deleted, and the existing section members be included in the previous northern section? And the members view was 51 agreed, 19 disagreed and 27 abstained.                                                                                                                                                

Question 2, Do you agree that prize money should be reduced or abandoned altogether in order to keep race fees as low as possible? And the members view was 30 agreed, 67 disagreed and 4 abstained.                                                                                                                                                            

As you can see from the above members voting on propositions and responding to the questions was quite low as a percentage of the membership and the committee hopes that this can be increased upon for any future questionnaire.

At this point the President declared that all committee positions be vacant, and each position was proposed and voted on resulting in some role changes in 2019 and these will be updated on our website and within the yearly handbook. Two key points are that all future correspondence for subscriptions, rings and  race entries should now only be sent to,

Jon Dodd at 267a Melbourne Road Ibstock, Leics. LE67 6NS  

Result of the postal ballot on propositions; proposition 1 resulted in 61 votes for, 34 votes against and 2 abstained, proposition carried. Proposition 2 resulted in 17 votes for, 77 votes against and 3 abstained, proposition failed.

The AGM was then closed but I would like to report one other matter, as many members are already aware that the committee towards the end of 2018 to cease being involved with one loft racing. When the idea was first brought to the table it was by no means a unanimous decision to go down this route but all the committee got behind it and our hopes and aspirations were to generate extra profit for the Club which would be used to keep running costs down and also to promote ‘ the Future of the Sport’ initiative. However, after three years the committee’s view was that financially we were not gaining any benefit as shown in our financial statements and more importantly the one loft race had become a significant distraction away from our core focus which clearly has to be putting on good quality races for the Club members.   

I would like to finish with some positive news in that we have had at least 57 new members since the AGM and dispel the rumour by stating the committee has never spoken about increasing the marking fee to £5, and finally, I wish all members old and new good luck and good fortune in the 2019 season.

Tony Whitehurst, President