Finance Committee Meeting; Executive Committee Meeting

This evening, we held our regular Finance Committee Meeting,  followed by Executive,  at Clyde Road.

In the Finance meeting,  we reviewed our management accounts for February.   Revenues and costs to date are reasonably as expected,   with the sole exception of our membership revenue to date.   At this point,  it is causing a little concern,  since we are behind in this revenue against our expectations.   March will be an important month for us,  and we probably have yet to see the positive impact of the new and improved Membership Benefits scheme,  which should add as a further incentive for subscription renewals.

Regular readers of the Finance Committee posts to this blog will be aware that we have been reviewing the ground rent situation for Clyde Road for some time.   In the past few weeks,  this has thrown up a challenging situation which may have further cost expectations than we initially expected,  although ultimately clearly in the long term beneficial to the Institution.   The Finance Committee is investigating the situation in detail,  with outside professional advisors,   before being in a position to make a specific recommendation to the Executive and thence Council.

The sponsorship of the Annual Conference is off to a reasonable start,  but we have some way to go before reaching our target.

We followed the Finance meeting with Executive.  After minutes and a summary of key engagements,   John Power updated Executive on plans for the celebration of our 175th anniversary,  including a meeting in the Aras in the summer.

Brian Kavanagh reported to the Executive on behalf of the Finance Committee.

I then personally announced the name of the candidate whom we would like to propose at our next Council meeting as the incoming Junior Vice-President (and who would then be President in 2012-13).   Executive were enthusiastic about the candidate,   and his name will go forward to Council accordingly.

We then had a 25 minute presentation and discussion on our CPD strategy,  as a further update to the presentation and discussion on the topic at our last meeting.    As an outcome,   John Power is seeking volunteers to head up a CPD task force,  with a view to analysing and proposing a CPD strategy back to Executive (and thence Council) within a three month period.

John Power then updated Executive on the planning for the Annual Conference.

A number of items were raised under AOB.   In particular it was agreed to seek volunteers for a second new task force,  which would oversee the implementation of the recommendations in the recent report on Mathematics and Science teaching in our schools.