Issue 28 September 2005
COMMENTCommunicationAt our last AGM in June there was a motion from the floor concerning our methods of communicating with the membership on matters of policy. Communication, as everyone is aware, to be effective relies on a two way flow. The Hon Sec voiced his opinion that MCofS's communication on its work was well established, as policy had always been circulated for comment before being passed and accepted at AGMs (although not everybody is represented at each AGM they should have been aware of the issues). Hence we have a robust framework of policy positions to which the staff and elected volunteers can work to. However, the same could not be true of the flow back to the Executive; witness the many appeals made in the Scottish Mountaineer for members to tell their Executive what their views were over the past few years and the very small number of responses. Of course we cannot force people to read the magazine nor to comment, but many agreed with the Hon Sec that MCofS did indeed make strenuous attempts to be democratic and to elicit member's views. Elected Officers and Staff use the policies to help them take a stance, but with limited resources, they make their own judgements on priorities. These are indicated in the Corporate Plan (which is published on the website and which is passed every 3 years at AGM). In the past (2 in 35 years) we have produced and distributed questionnaires on what it was that our members wanted us to concentrate on. Ten per cent of these questionnaires were returned. The answers helped the Executive to focus on what mattered to the membership. That was before the days of the Scottish Mountaineer and only Individual Members and Club Secretaries received questionnaires. Last year the BMC sent out a questionnaire (to a selected number of members) and is now prioritising its policies and areas of interest from the results. Based on these more effort is going into access and conservation and rather less on competitions and team development. Yet, there is a lot more interest from the “volunteer support” who devote their time and energies in helping with the latter, especially for younger climbers. This highlights the dilemmas of balancing the wish to represent all members' interests, acting on the returns from a questionnaire which will ever only represent a limited number of members and then prioritising limited resources. The MCofS have a 'Membership Questionnaire' prepared but the costs of printing, distribution and analysing the results are too high for us to contemplate just at the moment. With communication through Scottish Mountaineer to ALL members, it is our intention that in a future issue of the SM there will be a “Questionnaire” which will give every member of the MCofS the opportunity to comment. Please take the opportunity when presented. We also communicate direct to Club Secretaries on issues of administration via an occasional Club News Sheet although it was suggested at the AGM that email would be better for communicating urgent items. The detail of our staff's and Elected Officers position on a given issue is also guided by the policies. An example would be the energy debate and our stance on wind farm development – which developments would MCofS object to? It would be almost impossible to consult on the detail of every item we get involved in – staff would spend more time consulting and miss opportunities for action – so consultation and debate on our policies and corporate plan and our priorities by you the members through the pages of Scottish Mountaineer and at our AGM IS important. Your Committee cannot operate in isolation. We need your ideas, thoughts and suggestions for the MCofS to continue to be a democratic membership organisation, we hope the new UK IT database will allow better email communication, if financially possible a questionnaire will reach you all and the AGM (as we have seen this year) is your opportunity to have such issues debated. Use it.
Fred Belcher NB: the views expressed here are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of the MCofS Executive Committee |
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