October 2025 – Strategic priorities update

| September 17, 2025

Half-year financial update

At the Annual General Meeting (AGM) in April 2025 our new President Bob Beebe, GU4YOX announced a number of high-level objectives. Ultimately these all impact the Society financially, but two have a financial focus:

  • Increase the number of members in the Society by 2% over the next twelve months

  • Break even financially over the next 24 months

With the June 2025 financial results available we can reflect on progress towards these goals.

Capital expenditure

We continue to invest in the Society. Capital expenditure has been made behind the scenes in 2025 to update our IT structure with a keen eye on IT security and resilience – a constant risk highlighted by recent high profile hacking cases. Further capital expenditure is planned in the area to modernise the IT infrastructure and further improve our IT security and resilience.

The Board has further project investment planned for 2025-2029 and is currently prioritising those projects.

Cash and investments

I am pleased to report that cash and investments have grown in 2025; this allows us to continue to undertake capital expenditure and not reduce membership benefits though cost cutting. Overall, the balance sheet remains strong.

Membership

Being a membership Society, our main income stream is that of membership. We’ve seen an increase in that income over the first six months of the year, largely due to the 2024 membership fee increases. The membership fee increase in 2025 will not have much impact until later in 2025 and beyond. Accounting rules require that, however a member pays, their membership fee income is spread over the 12 months of their membership. In the first six months of 2025 it is disappointing to report that membership numbers have fallen by 1.9%, or 2.5% if we include Silent Keys.

The Membership Team at HQ follows up with members who lapse, and this follow-up does result in some members renewing. The responses from lapsed members are reported to the Board on a regular basis and this information is used to support decision making.

We reported on the recent strategy meeting in the September 2025 RadCom (page 28) and on the RSGB website. At that meeting, your Board decided amongst a number of strategies, to expand the “Reimagination” workstream to put a focus on modern technologies to help the Society to appeal to ‘modern’ radio amateurs and different audience groups that are interested in those technologies. It is vital that your Society develops to meet the needs of new audiences to stay relevant, bring new people to the hobby, and RSGB Membership.

Let us not forget that actions to retain and attract members help us move to break even as fixed costs are spread over a larger number of members.

We are always looking at ways to improve the Society’s membership offering, such as the introduction of the RSGB app and also the partner museum discounts which have been so popular over the summer. However, if you have any suggestions for new membership benefits, we would be happy to hear them. Send your ideas to haveyoursay@rsgb.org.uk

Breaking even

The Board, staff and other volunteers are working towards a break-even result, reviewing ways to increase revenues and being cost efficient at every opportunity.

The budget process starts again shortly and that is always an opportunity to look at revenue and costs in a new way. The Board approves the budget in December each year, but it takes a lot of work to get to a final budget to approve.

One area of cost reduction that is thought provoking is paper RadCom. We spend a significant amount each year printing and distributing RadCom. This excludes editorial costs and is only the printing and postage costs. This is a considerable amount of each membership fee, but due to the way that printing is priced, these savings are only accessible to us if we stop printing paper RadCom entirely.

Switching to using the RSGB app would also help reduce our environmental impact. However, the Board is acutely aware of the value many members put on the paper magazine. How do we reconcile this significant cost against a clear desire to lower membership fees in real terms and the demand from members for paper RadCom? This is something that we continue to consider.

Strategy

A key focus of discussion within the Board remains around retaining and attracting new members. If you have skills or experience which you would be willing to use to help us with this work, please get in touch.

Chris Wood, GD6TWF

RSGB Honorary Treasurer

hon.treasurer@rsgb.org.uk

Category: RSGB Strategic Priorities