Please be patient!

BMMC MEMBERSHIP

Sorry if you are still waiting for your membership renewal. 
We’ve “had a bit of bovver” as Frank Spencer would say.

As many of you know, Sue Whitlock, who has looked after accounts and membership so well for many years, was struck down by serious illness in June 2009, just as we should have been putting the annual accounts to bed.  Sue tried her best to keep up but was often too ill or too tired, with the treatment, to keep up.  Our Auditors stepped in to get the annual accounts out in time and Fay Crook gallantly took on the membership challenge.

One of the side effects of the hugely successful recruiting campaign in recent years, run by Team Wilson and others, is that the administration burden increases in direct proportion to the new members we take on.  Last year we took on over 500 new members; we were also in the first full year of Direct Debit and over one third of our membership took this option.  For future years a great benefit but very time consuming to set up in year one.  Sue (helped by husband, Chris, I am sure) covered most of this but when she fell ill, membership fell behind.
Fay tried to catch up but she was between jobs at the time; got a new job that meant working shifts and then got a “proper” new job that made it impossible for her to continue with our membership.  Now we had a second “bit of bovver”.

Thankfully, the Marshals’ Club never seems to be bereft of volunteers when we hit trouble.  Step forward Paul Sutcliffe of North region.  Paul offered his help at the Autosport Show and Chris Hobson presented him with a massive box of papers at the end of January.  I think he was a bit overwhelmed at first by the sheer volume of work there was to do (all the 2010 renewals!) but with some help and guidance from Sue and Fay, he is now well into the job.Acknowledgement of new memberships and renewals are starting to flow again and I hope it will not be too long before we are caught up.

Thank you for your patience and again our apologies for the delays.

George Copeland
National Treasurer