Chairperson’s Letter to IBA clg members - November 2020
Dear member,
What a year 2020 has turned out to be! All of our lives have been affected in one way or another. Our
beekeeping activities have changed, with many association activities and various courses postponed
or cancelled, and meetings have been online, with many of us using zoom or other online facilities
that some of us find easy, unfortunately others do not. This is a challenge for us.
The Board of Directors of IBAclg have decided to take the unusual step of contacting all of our
members individually. The first reason is to ask you to fill in a survey. The survey is to get, directly from
our members, direction on what you would like us to do, where our priorities should lie and to find
out what you want IBA to do and not to do.
The results will guide the Board of Directors into the future and will form the basis for a plan of action
for the next few years. We would like you to spend some time to fill out the survey to help us to work
in a more guided manner on your behalf.
We ask for your name and the association you are a member of so that we can try to ensure that only
IBA members complete the survey and that each member fills in the survey only once. Once we have
established this, the rest of the survey will be anonymised so that nobody can associate the name with
the answers given in the survey.
Very few of the questions are compulsory, and most have a “don’t know” or “I’d prefer not to answer” option.
You may get the survey from more than one source, as
we do not have an email address for all of our members, so we will be asking our associations to help
distribute the survey to those that may not have email addresses or may have difficulty filling in the
survey online.
We hope you are aware of the work that IBA is doing in the background. We have managed to keep
the cost of insurance low, and the affiliation fee is also quite low. Because of the reduced activities
this year the running costs have been lower than expected.
The Board of Directors have decided to return some funding to our associations, this is in progress currently,
and each association will receive funds based on their membership figures to spend on whatever project
the association decides on.
Our newsletter is still being produced and can be found on our website, go to the login section at the
bottom left of the home page, the password is "TheBuzz". Notification is sent to all association
secretaries when new editions are posted online, however we believe that some secretaries are not
forwarding correspondence from IBA to their members. Click here to access the IBA newsletter.
This is in a small minority of associations, and we are not sure of the reasons. If you think we should
communicate directly with our members, there is a facility at the end of the survey for you to have
your say, let us know.
This is where you can tell us anything you would like us to do or not to do.
There is no point in the Board of Directors spending time and resources, including finance on projects if
there is little interest in that area shown by our members.
Please help us to understand what is important and what is unimportant to you as a beekeeper, so
that we can focus on the important stuff and spend less time and money on things that are not as
important.
This opportunity is more direct than an AGM as all members can have their say.
Yours in Beekeeping, Derek Hanley, Chairperson IBA clg.
On behalf of the Board of Directors.
What a year 2020 has turned out to be! All of our lives have been affected in one way or another. Our
beekeeping activities have changed, with many association activities and various courses postponed
or cancelled, and meetings have been online, with many of us using zoom or other online facilities
that some of us find easy, unfortunately others do not. This is a challenge for us.
The Board of Directors of IBAclg have decided to take the unusual step of contacting all of our
members individually. The first reason is to ask you to fill in a survey. The survey is to get, directly from
our members, direction on what you would like us to do, where our priorities should lie and to find
out what you want IBA to do and not to do.
The results will guide the Board of Directors into the future and will form the basis for a plan of action
for the next few years. We would like you to spend some time to fill out the survey to help us to work
in a more guided manner on your behalf.
We ask for your name and the association you are a member of so that we can try to ensure that only
IBA members complete the survey and that each member fills in the survey only once. Once we have
established this, the rest of the survey will be anonymised so that nobody can associate the name with
the answers given in the survey.
Very few of the questions are compulsory, and most have a “don’t know” or “I’d prefer not to answer” option.
You may get the survey from more than one source, as
we do not have an email address for all of our members, so we will be asking our associations to help
distribute the survey to those that may not have email addresses or may have difficulty filling in the
survey online.
We hope you are aware of the work that IBA is doing in the background. We have managed to keep
the cost of insurance low, and the affiliation fee is also quite low. Because of the reduced activities
this year the running costs have been lower than expected.
The Board of Directors have decided to return some funding to our associations, this is in progress currently,
and each association will receive funds based on their membership figures to spend on whatever project
the association decides on.
Our newsletter is still being produced and can be found on our website, go to the login section at the
bottom left of the home page, the password is "TheBuzz". Notification is sent to all association
secretaries when new editions are posted online, however we believe that some secretaries are not
forwarding correspondence from IBA to their members. Click here to access the IBA newsletter.
This is in a small minority of associations, and we are not sure of the reasons. If you think we should
communicate directly with our members, there is a facility at the end of the survey for you to have
your say, let us know.
This is where you can tell us anything you would like us to do or not to do.
There is no point in the Board of Directors spending time and resources, including finance on projects if
there is little interest in that area shown by our members.
Please help us to understand what is important and what is unimportant to you as a beekeeper, so
that we can focus on the important stuff and spend less time and money on things that are not as
important.
This opportunity is more direct than an AGM as all members can have their say.
Yours in Beekeeping, Derek Hanley, Chairperson IBA clg.
On behalf of the Board of Directors.
