The Annual General Meeting was held on Thursday 15 February 2007, at 9.45pm in the Upper Hall of St Andrew's Street Baptist Church.
Present: Simon Fairclough (Chair), Maggie Heywood (Secretary), Chris Ford (Treasurer), Stephen Cleobury (Conductor), Richard Andrewes (V-P) and approximately 56 members.
1. Apologies were received from Sir Brian Pippard (Pres), John Meurig- Thomas (V-P), David Willcocks (V-P), Peter Johnstone, Andrew Morris, Christine Schmalz, Charlotte Barker, Beth Thompson, Helen Latchem, Jo Wilson & Jo Whitehead.
2. The Minutes of the last AGM were agreed and signed.
3. No matters arising
4. Treasurer's Report: We have not done too badly this year with £10,000 in the bank, but about £9,000 is already accounted for. The Concerts account shows losses from all ensembles. We seem to expect a loss and we do plan for them. We're trying to increase our income from other sources. If we didn't have the instrument hire income we would be in deep trouble. The YAC concert was a benefit concert for us and helped to pay for the Alumni Newsletter. This year we have paid extra money for the secretary/new secretary. We have set up the 50/50 club and the Parents and Friends Club to raise further income. The CUMS Fund is doing well, so some of the income can now be used to support the society up to 3% of its value each year. It would be good not to have to do that though. Any offers to help Michael Sharp with fund-raising will be gratefully accepted.
5. Appointment of Auditors: CKL Partnership was appointed unanimously, having been proposed and seconded by Lawrence Wragg and John Barber.
6. Chairman's report: The great strength of the society this year is the music-making, especially the Verdi - largely down to Stephen Cleobury and good student conductors. There are some wonderful concerts still to come, with the Strauss at Maggie's farewell concert and the two Elgar programmes early next year. It is not just artistic excellence which underlines the society; we are very grateful to Maggie and to Jo for all the work he's done and to the whole committee. We are all working hard to develop further in areas such as publicity and branding, individual sponsors and Trust funding, to secure out financial future. Community projects are attractive to funders, so we're forging partnerships with other University societies and the Music Faculty, and we're taking over the running of the Alumni weekend ‘Come & Sing event' again. We're leading the plans for the University's 800th celebrations in 2009. We're at the heart of the music-making within the University. There are definitely challenges ahead in the short term, while we wait for long-tem plans to kick in. We need more input from each ensemble and they need to do more for themselves and rely less on Maggie or her successor.
7. New Proposal to the Constitution from Jacob Head, which is described as a tidying up, rather than a real change. He proposed that rather than bringing each new office that's needed on the committee to an AGM to be agreed, it should be possible for the committee to create a new post as the need arises, with the agreement of 66% of the committee members (not 66% of the members present at a meeting). This proposal was passed.
8. Election of Officers: there being only one candidate for each post they were all elected unopposed.
The meeting closed at 10.17pm.