Thursday 27th November: An evening get together with David Ford & Mike Cropper, the aim being to discuss feedback of David's questionnaire. An excellent piece of work which Michael Gillon will present; we also agree that the SWAT analysis will not be included at this stage, and will be more appropriate as a guide for the next Officers meeting.

David tells us about the discussion at his committee meeting, which also included David Lovering. The knub of their discussion was the concept of "membership". The idea that there are "core members" maybe less than half the current membership that really drive the club and pay subscriptions to LI. The we could have "associate members", anyone who contributed any time voluntarily, for whom we would have a database, and effectively operate with them like a voluntary workforce.

Lastly we could have "friends of Lions", other organisations, partners, sponsors etc who support us in our good work.

The questionnaire clearly recognises that we have a spectrum of members, some for whom "fellowship" is the key ingredient, some for whom "service" is most important. The challenge will be to provide an environment for both groups and those between both ends of the spectrum.

David suggests that we need fewer Officers, and proposes seven, President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer, Head of Marketing & Membership, Head of Service and Head of Fellowship. Each would have a "second-in-command" who would become the next year's Officers.

We discuss how & when we might introduce this, and agree it should be for Mike's presidency, next year, which means we have to introduce the concept as early as April 2015. Our calendar has a meeting on 4th March where we would present proposals to the club, followed by an April business meeting.

I argue that this is a revolution; Mike wants to introduce many of the changes by stealth, but I'm not sure the new organisation can be done in that way. I also argue that we need a pretty compelling vision to hang this on, otherwise why go through all this upheaval, after all we typically donate £15,000 per year, and have a reasonable social calendar, why change.

The vision has to be to ensure the longevity and legacy of our club, by ensuring all members enjoy the experience and ambience the club provides, by providing the structure where many more people can serve the community alongside us, and by recognising that we can be more ambitious with our service provision.

So Wednesday is agreed, just questionnaire feedback, Q&A, no proposals at this stage, just let the findings sink in.

A long way to go yet, but quite an uplifting discussion, where David demonstrates his strengths.

PS! Charles has been looking at the service stats and one 33% of our membership has no more than three years service.