Pajero Club: President’s Report
June 2020
Covid-19 is still with us as we slowly emerge from lockdown. We are still being warned to be
careful so there are no new outbreaks. For some Club members, the lockdown has meant missed
4WD trips, training courses and meetings. For others, the period has been quite lonely, so it has
been heartening to hear of members spending the time checking on one another. Of course, the
committee has not been able to meet in person either, but there has been much activity as we
improve the IT, updated trip processes, and remain flexible around the next meetings.
Our new membership management system, Wild Apricot, was released to the membership on 8 th
May and is already being used by many people to access news, register for trips, and pay annual
fees. We have already reached login by over half the memberships.
Behind the rollout of the Wild Apricot system has been months of planning, trialling multiple
systems and then testing many of the common requirements for our club. The initial decision to
overhaul our information technology systems was made over a year ago and arose from the
Strategy meeting at the start of 2019. It was clear at that meeting that impediments in our
communications meant many members were not getting the benefits that they might expect from
the Club. Last year Terry Barbie undertook to lead the IT Transformation project and we were
hopeful of having a new system in place by the end of 2020; we are not there yet but well on track.
One benefit will be a more friendly environment to get help for Wild Apricot, another benefit will
be consolidation of news, driver training, finance, and membership as we reduce the number of
independent websites that we rely on.
The Wild Apricot Implementation sub-committee has worked hard for several months up to the
release day. The work continues as they support anyone wanting assistance getting up and
running on their phone, tablet, laptop or desktop computers. This is another example of a
subcommittee tackling some of our more intractable problems utilising the skills of a small and
diverse group of members who combine their different skills and experience. Memberships end
on 31 st May so around 18th May everyone received the Annual Membership Renewal Notice and
invoice. It is pleasing that many have gone straight into Wild Apricot and paid by our preferred
method of credit or debit card.
Our Annual General Meeting is scheduled for Wednesday 19 th August 2020 and this is the
occasion that we have various reports on the preceding year and elect a committee for 2020-
2021. The usual face-to-face meeting at the Bowls Club is problematic so we have adopted
scenarios that it may be possible to proceed as normal, or it might be necessary to adjust the AGM
in some ways. At the time of writing this report, we are planning for both possibilities.
All committee positions become vacant at the AGM and any financial member is welcome to
nominate before the start of the AGM. The Rules of the club list formal requirements of various
positions, but we now have detailed Policies sitting beneath those Rules to provide further
information for committee and general members alike. Since the Strategy meeting at the start of
2020 we have begun work on some Procedures which are more in the form of guidelines around
particular roles and events. So far, we have procedures drafted for effective meetings and for the
annual general meeting. In fine tuning our policies and then developing procedures we are
documenting as much information and wisdom as possible so that future leaders do not have to
re-invent solutions. We are striving for the right depth of documentation whilst trying not to be
so prescriptive and bureaucratic that we stifle the enthusiasm and creativity that will be required
to address the new challenges of 2021 and beyond.
A high-level summary of the benefits and risks around the Pajero Challenge were listed in this
report last month and we have requested ideas around its future. Those requests have generated
a spectrum of ideas from business as usual to winding up. A complete end to the event would
mean we overlook the Pajero Challenge tradition built over many years, and the energy and