September 2025 – Strategic priorities update

| August 13, 2025

Preparing the Society for the future

Members of the RSGB Board and senior HQ staff

The RSGB Board and senior HQ staff had a two-day, face-to-face meeting in Bedford during July to discuss, amongst other things, RSGB strategy.

The main objective of the discussions around strategy was to understand, in detail, what we had set out to do with our strategic goals, how well we had done to date and what direction we should take going forward.

The strategic priorities

For some time, the RSGB has been focused on four primary strategic goals: growth of amateur radio; membership of the RSGB; spectrum and licensing; and ensuring the continued financial stability of the Society

Within the Growth strategic goal, we created a set of workstreams, each of which has been led by a Board Director. These are:

  • Practical outreach

  • Skills and career development

  • Mature audience segment

  • Getting started

  • Positive support and encouragement

  • Reimagination

  • Young people audience segment

Progress so far

There has been excellent progress within the Practical Outreach and Young People audience segment workstreams. A volunteer team has been established and there have been many successful outreach and/or youth projects completed – all of which have been detailed within RadCom and our other comms channels.

Within the Mature audience segment workstream, members of the RSGB who are also in the u3a have been sought and a small team formed. The RSGB members of the team developed a non-technical presentation about amateur radio aimed at mature audiences and we hope this will be used as part of the relationship that is being developed with the u3a organisation. The RSGB team is also actively considering which other potential organisations to target.

The Reimagination workstream is all about taking amateur radio to new audiences and we have a new volunteer Maker Champion who is now considering how we best take our hobby and share it within the large maker community. We are also thinking about how we can offer our traditional radio amateur member an insight into the world of the maker and how the two may overlap.

One question that gets asked regularly is what to do with the new people we encourage to get involved with amateur radio. As a Society we are now investigating the possibility of providing training for individuals with specific backgrounds where the existing routes into the hobby may not be a good fit.

Could we do more? Yes, of course we could

We should always remember that the RSGB is viewed with very envious eyes from outside of the UK; our social media, video library, Convention and our book sales, to name but a few, are the envy of European and International societies. We must always remember that we have a core team of employed staff but are primarily a volunteer-based organisation. We have very finite resources, and we must use them wisely.

In reality, across all aspects of life, member societies are on the decline – we see this in just about every example we look at. Technical information is now abundantly available online at no cost and the days where we could expect an active amateur to be a member of the RSGB have gone.

“What do the RSGB do for me?” is something we hear often. Being a member of the RSGB provides a wealth of services, from planning advice to EMC to the publication of RadCom and discounts against our book sales. We now offer members discounted access to a number of museums, as well as free entry to Bletchley Park. We also organise a vibrant contest calendar and operating marathons. We run the amateur radio examination system on behalf of Ofcom, providing easy access to exams through our online system which is supported by our dedicated team of volunteer online invigilators.

Arguably the most important role that the Society undertakes is one of representation of our hobby both nationally and internationally – with Ofcom, the IARU and by attending the WRC and CISPR events. This work is key. Without access to spectrum there is no amateur radio and spectrum threats are extremely real. We would sincerely encourage all members of the Society to do all they can to explain to non-members the good work done in this area; this alone should be reason enough to be a member.

Going forward

One of the aspects of strategy discussed was that of a more forward-thinking plan for the Society. What does the RSGB need to look like in five to ten years?

What will society look like in that timeframe, and what does a national society for 2035 need to be? We have discussed the concept of a ‘Project 35’ whereby we begin to think about these questions now and start to plan for the future of the RSGB.

To ensure relevance of the Society to future generations of radio amateurs, we will identify  newer amateur radio-related technologies and incorporate these into existing events and activities such as the HamFest, the RSGB Convention, Tonight@8 presentations and the RadCom suite of publications.

The Board has also committed to restart the VLT (Volunteer Leadership Team) series of meetings. These will focus initially on pooling ideas from the wider volunteer team regarding how we ensure the future relevance of the Society.

In the short term, we must encourage active radio amateurs to be members of the national society, primarily so we can continue the work in spectrum defence, without which the hobby would be under extreme threat. It’s all very well saying that someone else will always do this work, but without significant membership numbers, will they?

Board Chair, Stewart Bryant, G3YSX

Board Director, Mark Jones, G0MGX

strategy@rsgb.org.uk

Category: RSGB Notices, RSGB Strategic Priorities