Friends Update
Dear D Friends
Tracy Cullen ith baubles and tinsel a distant memory, and
W spring eagerly anticipated along with daffodils and snowdrops, to name but a few, another year is upon us and with it some changes to our membership scheme and general administration. We know from your feedback just how important The Alnwick Garden charitable programmes are to you; indeed these are a core value of our Not-For-Profit status and their gradual expansion and success are a source of great pride to us. As we look ahead, this very success tells us that our costs in sustaining these programmes will rise substantially, not least because recent cutbacks in the nation’ s infrastructure are creating needs that simply will not be met from other directions.
In this situation, we are taking steps to safeguard our programmes and ensure that we never have to ration the numbers who can benefit from them, raise the ticket price disproportionately, or( worst case) shut activities down due to a lack of money. Having looked at membership schemes of comparable national attractions we have fine-tuned our offering, but we are still at the forefront of family value for money.
Thanks to our IT system we are now able to link all of your expenditure to your individual membership record, much as many business do through their loyalty cards. We hope, therefore, to be able to offer you in the future a membership package that reflects your contribution to the financial security of The Alnwick Garden and its charitable programmes. Finally, we are considering replacing our printed bi-annual Friends Magazine with a digital version. We know that a very high proportion of our Friends are internet and email users and hope that you will find this an acceptable, environmentally friendly and cost-effective way of receiving your Magazine. Please let us know if you cannot receive the magazine in this format.
We thank you, as always, for your continued support and I hope you will have another delightful year enjoying the beauty of The Alnwick Garden.
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