February 2026 – Strategic priorities update

We cannot do this without you

The RSGB Board is deeply committed to its strategy which has been focused on the growth of amateur radio but is now seeking to expand this focus to include membership growth. There will be more details about this later this year.

However, the Board cannot deliver its strategy entirely within its own resource of eight Directors. Nor can it put more load on its already hardworking staff. It needs your help to build and develop what I believe is already the most efficient and effective amateur radio national society in the world.

We need Directors to lead a portfolio of committees and Honorary Officers, as well as to lead certain aspects of the RSGB strategy. Two Elected Directors stand down at the next AGM. The closing date for the nomination of Elected Directors who will join the Board at the 2026 AGM is 31 January, so if you have the skills for these roles please put your name forward. Of course the role is hard work and takes time, but it is also rewarding, you learn a lot and for those early in their career it offers a useful addition to their CV.  If you feel you have Board-level skills that would be useful to the Society but you can’t currently commit to a three-year term as a Director, we’d still like to hear from you to discuss how you might support the Board’s activities.

Skills and career development

We are often looking for team leaders, and I have included an advertisement in RSGB Matters in this edition of RadCom for a volunteer to lead our skills and career development strategic objective. The focus of that role is to use the theoretical and practical skills learned through amateur radio as a springboard for career development. A strand of this is the creation of affordable, exciting courses aimed at those who want to develop skills just beyond, and significantly beyond, the Full licence level. These courses will be an exclusive member benefit. We have dipped our toe in the water with the Friday workshops that we reintroduced at the last RSGB Convention and which we hope to take on the road in the near future. Teaching and attending this type of workshop is fun and fulfilling and we hope others will step forward to help.

Individual contributors are the backbone of many of our committees and also provide specialist individual help to the amateur radio community. The term committee gives the wrong impression of this activity. They are not ‘talking shops’ but are work-delivery teams often doing highly specialist work in support of amateur radio. The RSGB EMC Committee, for example, is looking for members prepared to help fellow radio amateurs by investigating the source of interference and advising on suitable methods of elimination or at least mitigation.

Strengthening clubs

The traditional backbone of amateur radio is a strong network of clubs where members can meet and share both friendship and radio technology. Where groups can get together to share learning and undertake projects as a team that would not be possible as individuals. At the RSGB Convention a group of clubs shared their success stories in attracting new members. I encourage all club committee members to look at the recording of the session which you can find in the 2025 Convention playlist on the RSGB YouTube channel. Successful approaches in the discussion included offering in-person licence training with post-training mentoring and technical support for new licensees, building co-operative relationships with local branches of Men’s Sheds, u3a and the WI, using mainstream and social media to promote their club, putting on exhibition stations at public events and running POTA stations.

Elsewhere in this issue you will see a report of the open day held at Crawley Amateur Radio Club (the local club at which I am a member). This was a fun event that we had not held before. At one level it was an ultra-mini rally, a mini exhibition of the breadth of amateur radio and an occasion to meet friends from other radio clubs in the area. On the other hand, it attracted a number of radio amateurs who are now returning to the hobby and several non-amateurs who are now prospective new radio amateurs. A particularly interesting group were the small number of non-amateurs who wish to develop off-grid communications using technologies such as meshtastic. They recognised that the RF skills and distributed local membership in the amateur radio community would be beneficial in their goal of building the communications paths they were finding difficult to achieve by themselves. The moral of the story here is to embrace those who wish to enjoy non-traditional radio technologies into the amateur radio community, to mutual strategic benefit.

The process of strengthening a club is of great value to the club itself and also contributes to the RSGB strategic objectives by maintaining the interest in amateur radio for some, attracting others to return to the hobby and by attracting others still to take up amateur radio. This is a win-win because the club becomes stronger, more vibrant and more viable whilst assisting the RSGB in its strategic objective of increasing the number of radio amateurs in the UK.

As you can see from this update, the RSGB Board is committed to supporting and developing amateur radio in the UK but cannot do this alone. If you are able and willing to help this worthwhile cause either through volunteering for the RSGB or volunteering to support an activity in your local amateur radio community, we thank you.

Stewart Bryant, G3YSX

RSGB Board Chair

strategy@rsgb.org.uk

• You can also find this update in the February 2025 RadCom

Category: RSGB Strategic Priorities