June 2024 – Strategic priorities update

| May 24, 2024

Implementing and measuring the Society’s strategic priorities

I’m Mark, G0MGX, and I joined the Board by co-option in February and formally at the AGM on 13 April. I have been asked by the Board to oversee the Society’s strategy which is something I am more than happy to do.

I consider the continued development and implementation of a coherent strategy an essential component to secure its long-term future and success.

Currently we have four key areas identified as strategic priorities:

  • Growth of amateur radio

  • Membership of the RSGB

  • Spectrum and licensing

  • Continued financial stability of the Society

There have been several activities already associated with the growth priority and seven workstreams are being developed. Each will be championed by a Board Director. For example, Ben, GW4MNL is overseeing the creation of an outreach team that will put in place the building blocks to support individuals, clubs and RSGB volunteers to take amateur radio out to a variety of external audiences.

Our membership priority will involve identification of active amateurs who are not members of the Society and sharing with them the many benefits of joining and adding their voice to ours. We also need to engage more with our membership to better understand their expectations and needs going forward.

The new licence conditions are just beginning to embed into the amateur community and the RSGB will continue to provide support and information to radio amateurs to help them discover the benefits of most of the new licence conditions. Our new ability to let non-licensed individuals use our equipment is already creating excitement at the RSGB National Radio Centre where the public are invited to talk on the radio daily. This new licence condition alone has huge implications for our ability to demonstrate the hobby in a public arena and I would encourage any future events to take full advantage.

The financial stability of the Society is the responsibility of the Board as a whole and the RSGB Honorary Treasurer Chris Wood, GD6TWF will be leading this on our behalf.

It is essential that each strategic goal and activity has clear means identified to measure success, and I will be working to ensure that these are put into place and to monitor and report on our progress.

“…the continued development and implementation of a coherent strategy is essential to secure the Society’s long-term future and success”

I am also keen to expand the Strategy remit to encompass the following:

  • Future direction of the Society; what will the RSGB look like in five to ten years’ time

  • Leadership of the Society’s committees and groups – a common strategic direction

We need an all-encompassing strategy so that the volunteers and staff have a single direction and everyone knows where the Society is heading.

However, we cannot do all these things at once on top of the usual events and activities that are a vital part of the Society’s year. The Board has had to make choices about where to focus initially and plans have changed as a result. For example, the Board had originally planned to hold the membership workshop soon after the one on growth, but it has now decided to postpone the membership workshop until later this year. This will allow us all to focus on implementing the ideas that came from the growth workshop and ensure those are working well.

“focus on implementing the ideas that came from the growth workshop”

There will be a lot of activities associated with the strategy workstreams and volunteers will play a key part in the outcome. Do you have something to offer to help shape the future strategic direction of the Society? Can you help manage the individual projects we will be developing to fulfil our strategic aims? If so, I’d be delighted to hear from you. Over the coming months we will publish more details of the projects we need to resource in order to develop and progress our strategy, so please keep a look out for further details across our comms channels.

“Do you have something to offer to help shape the future strategic direction of the Society?”

I would welcome input from members on our strategic direction and am always happy to discuss ideas. We already have a number of individuals who have come forward, but we are always on the lookout for more. Please reach out to me if you have any questions or input to this process.

Mark Jones, G0MGX

Board Director

strategy@rsgb.org.uk

Category: RSGB Notices, RSGB Strategic Priorities