SSAGO Blog

Following the AGM, the national Exec decided to make sure their full annual reports were available to all the membership through our Exec blog!

SSAGO Membership Overview Statistics for the Year

• End of 2017 saw 910 members part of SSAGO, and increase of 2% (19 members) from 2016.
• 645 members (71% of membership) have been active online over the past 12 months .
• 477 members (52% of membership) have attended at least 1 national event over the past 12 months
• 869 (95%) have Full Membership status
• 39 (4%) have Associate Membership
• 386 members (42% of membership) are involved with Scouting/Guiding at Higher Education/similar compared to 415 members (46% of membership) are involved at home.
• Gender spread of SSAGO is as follows: 37% male, 61% female and 2% other

Outlines from Manifesto

• Keep on top of club membership and payment, work to improve our ever growing overseas contact with similar SSAGO type clubs
  • Have successfully accomplished this, by to talk to clubs about membership submissions soon as the new academic year started in September, then kept posting and emailing clubs every month! I set a provisional deadline for membership lists for November Rally, however only a handle of clubs did this, but increasing the amount of posts and talking to individual clubs, most then got membership lists and payment in on time. I then worked even closer with the remaining clubs to make sure everyone knew what was needed to be done and assist with their enquiries
  • After last Feb rally, the position of International Officer was created as an Assistant role, this meant that they could work on making close bonds with international groups that were similar to SSAGO. This saw a group of Dutch contingent members attend reunion, as well as a few Dutch and Irish attending Witan in a Weekend.
• Creating strong links between clubs no matters their size or how long they have been part of SSAGO, to meet up outside of national events.
  • Admittedly this point was a lot harder than I thought it would be, I have received feedback from reps on regions and have managed to make the regions more defined, taking into the consideration of reps feedback. I had attended Northern Freshers with 50 people attending, with one even coming from as far as Edinburgh! Before hand over I aim to complete this, including creating a page with regions up on the website so that the information is available to all clubs and indie members alike. I hope this will encourage more and stronger inter-club events!
• To work closely with the Publicity Officer to increase membership.
  • I have attended several events with James as well as attending events such as Poacher and Gilwell Fun Days, when he was not able to. Also offered feedback on publicity material that contained club information so new clubs were not missed out.

What else has happened over the year

• Attended many SSAGO Suport events including: Oxonjam, Gilwell Fundays, Poacher and Gilwell Reunion, advertising SSAGO to Explores and promoting us to leaders as well as showing how helpful and reliable we can be to events.
• Caught up with new clubs from last year to see how their first year was and what their plans for the upcoming year was. Unfortunately in some cases clubs did not respond and after some investigation it had turned out they had become inactive.
• Made two very colourful spreadsheets, one running from April to August the other September to April, this was so I could easily see; what groups had submitted membership,paid, how many members of what type each club had, as well as highlighting new clubs and struggling clubs and other important comments. This really helped with the organisation and a visual key to the status of clubs.
• Worked very closely with the Indie Rep Lourna, helping to set up online payment through the website for Indie membership, creating a spreadsheet to allow them to also keep up to date with membership and payment statuses. Kept regular contact to make sure they were not struggling in the role and knew how to handle different situations.
• Set up multiple  new clubs, these are:
  • Lincoln Uni
  • Edinburgh (EEGS)
  • Trinity St Davids
  • Herts SSAGO
  • Dundee
  • In the process of setting up Cumbria SSAGO, Derby and restarting Warwick.
• Started to write up a fact sheet for new committees, however I hope to make this condensed and easy to follow, yet still have the information reps thought would be helpful- but there is a lot of information!
• Started helping Larah (SSAGO Archivist) read through  past material to find membership numbers!
• Attended a TSA and GirlGuiding meeting and wrote the minutes
• Helped to audit the accounts with Josh, and try to support throughout the finance issues that have occurred this year.
• Learnt how the behind the scenes of the shop worked while looking after Indie membership payments. As well as the membership system on how to approve clubs and to confirm their payments online.

Assistant Update (SAGGA Rep)

I worked with Laura to help find a Returning Officer and see how she has been doing in her role.

Laura has spent the year attending a lot and a lot of SAGGA events and helped at alternative (SAGGA) rally, attended national support events such as OxonJam and Sparkle on Ice! Delivered lots of babies and ran Witan In a Weekend rally, and is excited to carry on her role in the next coming year.

Action points to work on between now and handover

• Further work out how to proceed with SSAGO regions, and work with the webmaster to get this up online
• Work with the webmaster to get access to see where indie members are studying to help guide them to nearby clubs and regions
• Condense the new ‘New Committee Guidance’ fact sheet
• Create a suggestions page that offers ideas for regular club meetings, this would help offer new and current clubs programme ideas.
• Finish the SSAGO bunting and complet fixing the SSAGO megaphone!
• Work with the elected Membership Officer to integrate them into the running of SSAGO in time for handover!
• Final check up on new groups and struggling groups to see how they want to move forward and how they would like supporting.

My 5 words I learned while on exec

• Exec (used to spell it Exsec)
• Membership (used to spell Membership and a variety of other ways)
• Whether (spelled anyway but the correct way)
• Committee (every possible way but not correctly)
• Certain (used to think that spelt curtain so spelt it sertain)