2021-12-31-accounts

Ventnor & District Local History Society Trustees Report for 2021

Charity name, registration number, address and trustee names

Name: Ventnor & District Local History Society Charity Registration Number: 286848 Address: 11 Spring Hill, Ventnor, PO38 1PE

Trustee names (as of 31 December 2021):

John Carter Linda Chester Leigh Geddes (Society Chair) Janet Griffin (Society Deputy Chair) Yvonne Hardy (Society Treasurer) Paul Kingswell Les Matravers Jeffrey Mazo (Society Secretary) Lesley Telford

Structure, how it is managed, including how it recruits trustees

Governing Body:

The Governing Body consists of a board of three to twelve Trustees who meet approximately every six weeks. All Trustees are active in the running of the Society; there are no ‘Honorary Trustees’.

All volunteers are welcome to attend Trustee meetings (apart from during confidential items).

The Trustees and officers (Chair, Deputy Chair, Treasurer and Secretary) are elected each year at the AGM in March, and they can stand again for election each year.

Trustees are recruited from our volunteers, members of the Society, and the local community. We look to recruit Trustees with particular skills and experience; currently we are looking for marketing and membership administration expertise. We advertise these openings through correspondence to the membership, on our website, and on our Facebook page, as well as networking through the local community.

Management:

The Society is completely managed and run by volunteers. We currently have 20 volunteers. Roles necessary for the day to day management and running of the Society are covered by

individual volunteers who, if they are not trustees, have a 'link trustee' to work with them. Current management roles are:

Health and Safety Officer Meetings organiser (arranging speakers for monthly Society meetings) Membership Secretary Museum display area management Publicity Sales Volunteer co-ordinator Website admin

Sub Committees and Working Groups:

There is one sub-committee, established in the constitution: the Review Committee, which examines and accepts donations of artefacts, documents and images, and manages their recording. Working groups are set up to cover particular areas as necessary. Current working groups are the ‘Indexing and database group’ and the ‘Publications group’.

Objectives/Activities for 2021

In 2020, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we had to close the Museum and Heritage Centre to the public and cancel our regular members meetings and talks, and temporarily cease accepting donations of material to the museum and archive.

Our main goals for 2021 were to:

1. Monitor the Covid-19 situation and reopen the Heritage Centre as soon as possible, subject to the safety of our volunteers and visitors. Both our membership and our volunteer base tend to be, on average, older and more vulnerable than the general population.

2. Continue to provide services to our members and the community through new publications, our online shop, answering research queries and other outreach that did not involve physical meetings or contacts.

3. Keep our volunteer pool intact as most volunteer roles are public-facing and hence not available during lockdown/closure.

4. Maintain the financial viability and resilience of the Society.

Achievements and performance 2021:

1. We extended the use of electronic communications, including Zoom meetings and e-mail newsletters.

2. We continued to expand our knowledge base and responded to e-mailed research queries from Ventnor, the Island, the UK and beyond.

3. We upgraded the Museum sales and reception area, completing the refurbishment of the museum started in 2018. The sales area provides more sales space and offers full Covid protection for the public and our volunteers

4. We added a facility for accepting contactless payments in the Museum.

5. During the closure period we updated the Museum window displays to interest passers-by and keep people informed.

6. We sharply increased our use of social media, including our Facebook group, Facebook page and YouTube channel.

7. We continued to publish weekly articles on our website and in the South Wight Chronicle , and continued to update the website with new material

8. In conjunction with Medina Publishing we developed a guided walk, “Ventnor: Cradle of the Russian Revolution”, which was conducted on several days in July (Ventnor Fringe) and October 2021. The walks all sold out and were scheduled for repetition in 2022.

9. We did preliminary work towards publishing existing and new material as e-books.

10. We did preliminary work towards allowing public online access to our archive index database.

11. We re-opened the Museum to the public on a limited schedule in July.

Financial review

This is the second time our income has exceeded £25,000; the first was 2017, when we received £27,532 of a total grant of £31,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund. In 2021 we received two Local Council grants totalling £16,335 (Covid-19 Business Grant and Restart Grant). Without these grants, our income was £13,616, which comes from admission charges, membership subscriptions, sales, donations and Gift Aid. Our expenditure was £25,121, which included £11,379 for repairs and renewals (including upgrading the museum reception area and Covid-19 adaptation), and £5,189 for new publications.

Dr Jeffrey Mazo Secretary, Ventnor & District Local History Society October 2022

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