the naked Trust September 2011│Issue 5
Sales & Business Development Education [Natalie Harling, 01931 740017]
Nottingham OBA update: Gordon Asher is retiring after 30 years of incredible ‘service’. Gordon has raised thousands of pounds to support young people across the county.
Successful OBA weekend at Howtown: 8 OBAs attended, great atmosphere and some very engaged supporters exchanging creative fundraising ideas.
2 days at Scottish Learning Festival this week, very successful and over 40 really good new leads. New Peep board to attract punters to our stand went down well (identify the face in photo overleaf!)
Latest sales technique: deliver one of our branded new mugs with a Twix and tea bag – 4 mug drops resulted in 3 meetings and 2 bookings. Teachers clearly like tea!
Hackthorpe paddling adventure – do we have any larger helmets available for Richard?
Welcome to our summer/autumn newsletter! SMT update - this month from Will Ripley I am delighted to be writing this at a time when there is so much positive news to share. As we come towards the end of the financial year (30/9) it is great to be able to reflect back on our progress: fundraising has been challenging, we have sold more courses than we had anticipated and spent less than we had budgeted, putting The Trust in a good position for next year. Additional noteworthy highlights:
Individuals [Sian Howe & Sara Renwick, 01931 740018/11]
Following an exceptionally busy summer the Individuals team are now reviewing the summer activity and making improvements to our 2012 provisions. Click here for fantastic feedback from grateful parents.
A fantastically successful launch of the National Citizenship Service with courses delivered across 5 centres and a visit to Howtown by David Cameron
We’ve had to cancel the October Serious Adventure Water course at Loch Eil but the Rocks and Bike courses are still running at Ullswater and Aberdovey respectively.
A weekend meeting of the Outward Bound Associations (OBAs) at Howtown. Good to catch up with and personally thank some of our volunteers who give their time and energy to fund and find participants
We organised an OBA weekend and have offered all OBAs three Classic places at 50% to give the less active associations an achievable goal to aim for.
Annual Trustee meeting at Loch Eil and the official opening of Watson House, by the Duke of York
We hope to develop relationships with more foreign agents (not the 007-types) from Spain, France, Russia, Italy and the Middle East, possibly Thailand.
RMC and Heads of Centre meeting at Loch Eil, followed by a challenging 26km bike ride – there is life still in the HoC team!
As we look forward to another exciting year with very busy centres, the SMT would like to thank everyone for their ongoing support and tireless efforts across the whole of The Trust.
Corporate [David Ritchie, 01931 740025]
Success with Jaguar Land Rover, winning nearly £100k of new business with their apprentices work and a leadership programme. This puts us in prime position to show our capability and win their Graduate work for 2012 onwards.
the naked Trust September 2011│Issue 5
Corporate continued:
We are well on our way to meeting the sales targets for 2012, with Paul Marshalsea having met his already.
David made the trip to the wild north and briefed the Scottish Council on our corporate work and its importance to the success of Loch Eil and the wider Trust; we look forward to being introduced to their networks.
We have had a really successful five month Apprentice Development marketing campaign and are hosting corporate taster events at Eskdale and Loch Eil over the coming months.
And because we love tenders, we are waiting on tenterhooks to burn the midnight oil on three more for BAE Systems, National Grid and Centrica.
New conference peep board in action – mystery person in Devil’s Pulpit gorge, or is he?
Fundraising & Events, London [Ben Hutton 020 7610 4218]
I Shot the Sheriff: As we reported in the last newsletter, HRH The Duke of Edinburgh agreed to a joint dinner event at Buckingham Palace on 15 December on behalf of The Outward Bound Trust and The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. To make the night even more special, we have managed to secure the donated services of none other than Eric Clapton, who has agreed to perform an acoustic set for our guests. The event is already sold out and will net The Trust at least £600,000 in donations.
Sugar, Sugar: The family who invented the Wagon Wheel chocolate biscuit, who went on to grow a huge food and retail group (including Fortnum and Mason, Primark and Silver Spoon Sugar), have just awarded The Trust £250,000 for the new build project at Aberdovey, plus the promise of an extra £125,000 if we can match fund it. With this generous funding from the Garfield Weston Foundation, we are getting tantalisingly close to realising the project.
Singapore Slings: We are delighted that Emma Ferris and Freda Fallon are currently representing The Trust at the 2011 OBI Staff Symposium in Singapore, whose theme: is "Outward Bound Making a Difference in the Community". Emma and Freda will be presenting an interactive and creative workshop on the critical skills associated with marketing, selling, delivery and evaluation for use by the wider Outward Bound community.
Fundraising continued:
Fresh Meat: It gives us great pleasure to welcome two new additions to the fundraising team – Kate Woodward and Kerry Arthur. Kate joins us in the role of Research and Evaluation Coordinator, and will work closely with Emma Ferris on evaluation and communication of our impact. Kerry joins us in the new role of Senior Account Manager within the Corporate Partnerships Team. We are also delighted to welcome two new volunteer research interns from the USA: Cynthia Johnston who will be helping with our current events programme and Kelsey Mattson, who will be assisting the corporate partnerships team.
the naked Trust September 2011 │Issue 5
Marketing, Hackthorpe [Catherine Sturrock 01931 740026]
Our new Education brochures are now available, with online versions posted to our website. Copies have been distributed to centres and clients and a large scale eCampaign (40k new contacts) went out last week to a new database of senior education buyers within schools across the UK. We’ve produced both a Scottish and English/Welsh version, to account for the differences in curriculums and language, and to shout about the flexibility and breadth of our Scottish capability more loudly.
‘Peep through board’ to attract conference and events visitors to our stand, and give us a light-hearted but engaging differentiator from other exhibitors. Also a great and non-invasive reason for the sales teams to get in touch with the prospects post conference and send their photos – see photo on previous page.
Tori Dodd, our talented, and much liked marketing guru is unfortunately leaving The Trust to join another (the National) Trust. We wish her all the best, and hope she can shine there as much as she has at OBT – good luck and a huge thank you for all her creative and hard work.
New, generic OBA flyer now available to support all OBAs in their recruitment of participants on to our summer programmes. Ensures consistent branding and Trust messaging to the OBA audiences.
Operations and Centres Aberdovey [Andy Jeffrey, 01654 767 464]
Received full planning permission for the rebuilding of Log Cabin. The next stage is for the contractor to submit a proposal for design approval. We hope to use locally sourced timber and, as the contractor is also local, the environmental impact should be minimal and in keeping with our ethos.
The unwelcome return of bed bugs to the accommodation in Aberdyfi resulted in an ‘emergency’ strip and refurbishment of four bedrooms. An impressive piece of co-ordination and some long and anti-social hours by the maintenance team resulted in the accommodation being available for use a matter of hours before every bed in the Centre was required.
Delivered a course to ten groups from the American School in London. Nothing unusual about that other than the delivery team of Group Instructors, with the exception of one, were all from Loch Eil. A truly ‘international course’ – an English charity with Scottish instructors working in a Welsh centre delivering to an American customer!
Loch Eil [Tony Shepherd, 01397 773901]
6-7 September OBT Trustees and Chair HRH the Duke of York and members of the newly formed Scottish Council visited LE, met staff and saw participants from Keith Grammar School, Woodlands Special School, Auchmuty High School and Larbert High School. It was an opportunity for many to see LE for the first time and see the centre in action with a very diverse set of participants.
Two of this year’s Classic course participants, Ryan Wilson and Calum MacKay, gave excellent accounts of their recent experiences, accompanied by truly inspiring pictures.
Loch Eil is proud to have obtained the gold standard in the Green Tourism Business Award. Much hard work by several people has contributed to this achievement but particular mention goes to Christine Falconer.
Barbara Campbell was congratulated recently for 10 years’ service at Loch Eil in Housekeeping.
Finance, Hackthorpe [Ruth McCooey 01931 740006]
Finance have had the first of two annual visits from the auditors, checking our systems are working in line with our procedures. So far they are happy but they’ll be back in November! It’s our year end on Friday 30 September – please make sure that your expense claims up to end of September are completed asap. Street Address
555insurers recently reviewed Ullswater and were Suite The City, State 55555 very impressed by what they found, with no www.webaddress.com recommendations for improvement. Congratulations to the Ullswater team! E: email@address.com P: 555-555-5555 M: 555-555-5555 F: 555-555-5555
the naked Trust September 2011 │Issue 5 Ullswater & Howtown [John Crosbie, 01768 485004]
The PM, David Cameron, visited Howtown as part of The Challenge/NCS programme, and got stuck in to raft building. A successful event for all involved: impressed visitors, engaged kids, fantastic catering, national media coverage, even great weather, and only 1 grumpy ITV reporter.
NCS Connexions – the Ullswater team ran courses for the Cumbria Connexions/NCS project, working out of 3 different centres (Sedburgh School, YMCA Lakeside and Eskdale), with equipment and instructors being pulled in from other centres. The outcomes were successfully delivered, and we won the bid for 2012 – thank you to all involved.
Locals help reduce Ullswater/Howtown carbon footprint. Some folks (identity unknown) concerned with the carbon footprint of our powerboats removed the outboard from both our RIBs. Despite trialing the use of these boats with paddles we have decided that this is inadequate for our needs and have had to return to fossil fuel consumption and risking the wrath of our environmentalists.
Eskdale [Mark Oakley, 01946 723001]
Putting something back: Each year Eskdale supports a local W Cumbrian charity in their work with young people from Chernobyl. This year saw 12 youngsters and their interpreters spend the day having fun in and around the Eskdale estate. This is a real experience for both our visitors from Chernobyl and our staff alike (see photo). This year marks the 25th Anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. On Target: Eskdale is busier than ever and close to achieving £500k profit this financial year. Every penny of this is available for use by The Trust as unrestricted funds. So not only is Eskdale delivering to an increasing number of young people (under 25s), but it’s doing so whilst financially supporting the work of the wider Trust. A big thank you: Eskdale delivered 26 groups of Apprentices and Graduates. This involved a huge amount of co-operation from departments across the Trust, including Loch Eil staff heading south to help out. Thanks to the commitment and professionalism of all involved our impressed clients (HSBC and RollsRoyce) have already re-booked for next year.
Chernobyl youngsters at Eskdale
Metro [Steve MacKenzie, 0141 423 1020]
Metro is now well into the Mark Scott LfL Award Season. By mid October we will have 140 young people in 22 groups running community projects all over Western Central Scotland. These will have varied but large impacts on the young people and their communities.
Freda recently developed a lead for us to go back into Excel groups to re-address the MCMC agenda, which is exciting. We have been looking at how our current issues driven courses can be re-worded now that the rest of the Trust is running ‘themedprogrammes’.
Metro Myth: “Metro is a franchise” (Ullswater Instructor). We are an integral part of the Trust, taking part in the development and work of the Trust in the same manner as our other centres.
IT, Hackthorpe [Richard Nelson, 01931 740029]
The IT Acceptable use policy has been updated to include the Social Media policy. Please take 5 minutes to re-read it. The Policy can be found on the Global drive in the Notice board section.
I'm looking for input on what you see as the biggest single issue with IT in The Trust. Email me using a subject line of "IT Pain" and let me know before 31/10/11. I'll pull one of the emails from a hat on the 1/11/11 and send a small prize - so get thinking and typing!