Chairman’s Presentation

Our Chairman provided an excellent presentation at the AGM which set ot the Club’s objectives and the progress made towards their achivement.

Those present at the AGM would have also seen our planned expenditure and intended maintenance programme and heard about our financial situation and the financial challenges ahead.

The presentation is presented in AGM Minutes so all club members can see our achievements and intentions.

If you are a subscriber to the website, but not a RDRC member, you will not be able to access the AGM page.

Website Capability

Cost and Scope

In committee, and at the AGM, members asked about enhancements to our website based on capabilities they have seen in other websites. Videos and membership application forms were of particular interest. The situation is too complex to have been dealt with fully at the meeting.

Our website is based on a personal subscription which costs £36/year. In addition, we pay about £15 for website hosting. It is possible to process financial charges through the website, but these would be subject to a surcharge of 8% per transaction. Upgrading to £74/year Premium subscription would reduce the transaction charge to 4% and give a limited video clip capability + better interface to social media. However, this would not enable plugins which provide most of the nice to have “bells and whistles”. See WordPress prices HERE.

Membership Forms and Fundraising

At present, forms can be downloaded from the sebsite, but cannot be completed and submitted online. To use forms and the many other enhancements and ease of use features of WordPress requires a Business subscriprion which costs £240/year. This would enable me to install plugins such a forms, but many plugins are only available at an additional cost / item. This level of subscription would also enable me to provide most of the other features you see on commercial websites. There would still be a transaction charge of 2% unless you upgrade to eCommerce which costs £432 / yearand has no transaction charges.

Alternatives

An alternative, would be to host our membership activities on a seperate (but linked) site such as MemberMOJO which is used by many small clubs and organisations. This would streamline and automate our membership processes, it has no transaction charges and would cost £50 / year. See MemberMOJO HERE.

Charitible Funding and Donations

While the website can promote the opportunities for fund raising, the transaction charges make direct fundraising through the website unviable. Just Giving and Go Fund Me were suggested, but both of these take either a flat fee or transaction charges or both. Of the two, Go Fund Me seems best suited for our purposes and has a transaction charge of about 2%.. Links for donations can be made from our website to whichever charitible funding site we may use for this purpose.

Family and Friends Rowing

The website page (How to Get a Row) has been updated to reflect, the 3 rows under “taster” conditions before payment is required at £5 per session. This update includes payment details and a will have a link to the forms which are required to be completed for safety / insurance purposes. BACS details for payment have been included.