On March 29, at Rowany Festival, the annual report of SCA Ltd was given for the period since the previous Rowany festival. An expanded summary is presented here.
2012 was a very busy year for the Board. We had a record number of Board meetings to deal with the sheer volume of urgent business.
We saw a large number of changes in the board membership, with Board stalwarts Andrew Ross-Gowan departing at the start of the year, Tina Bean in the middle and Glynnis Hollindale retiring at the end of the year, all 3 after serving more than their terms and long stretches in executive positions. Matt Dolton retired during the year, and the end of the meeting sees retirement of Steven Baker as a board member as well as chair. New members were welcomed onto the board during the year: Jeff Nicholson, Louise Hollingbery, Kylie Maynard, Laurence Cooke and Margaret Sleigh. It’s been a time of rapid learning for these new members.
Finances were a key aspect of the year, with the unfortunate need to start paying GST. Treasurer Glynnis worked very hard to make this work as smoothly as could be expected for such a disruptive event. She also introduced a long and detailed finance policy during the year – we are not sure where she found the time. Membership fees were increased to offset the cost of rising prices including GST, insurance, and tax compliance. SCA Ltd moderated the influence of GST by covering the costs of GST for the first quarter and for already advertised events until policies and advice could be firmly established.
This year was also a bad year for compliance with the unfortunate need to introduce event memberships. The board spent considerable effort trying to find sustainable alternatives to introducing this levy and then creating guidance material on best implementation methods. New indemnities was introduced to accommodate the new insurance policy, and also to enable simplification of indemnities, reducing the the amount of paperwork to be signed.
A large amount of policy creation was completed with new policies created including; Policy on Proof of Membership and Indemnity, Financial Policy, Board Membership Policy, Bullying and Harassment policy created as well as numerous existing policies being updated. A new affiliation agreement with SCANZ was also completed.
A new and improved Board Registry Webpage was introduced thanks to the hard work of Jeremy Gregson and many others, while the main SCA Ltd website was kept up to date by Steven Maynard.
Many projects begun in 2012 are still under way, nearing completion – updated policies on alcohol, privacy, definition of dependants and a code of conduct as well as negotiation regarding Victorian weapons legislation. Two subcommittees were established, one to investigate the impact of weapons legislation nationally and in each state on SCA, and a Social Media Sub-committee formed with SCANZ and Seneschalate to look at social media policy for the Kingdom. These foundations will show in a strong output by the board in 2013.