Birmingham Open Spaces Forum

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Matthew Boulton Neighbourhood Forum,
Soho Pool Wharf, Hockley.

Resources - Starting a Group

Getting a Group Started
Birmingham Open Spaces Forum is a new network organisation that aims to support local communities make the most of their open spaces.

What is your Open Space?
The open space that is important to your community might be a park, a nature reserve, a playing field or just a square of green at the end of the road. Big or small if it is important to your community then it is worth making the most of.

Why do we need a group?
Setting up a group means you can spread the load. Whether your space needs saving from developers or just cleaning up - doing it by yourself is hard work. If you can get friends and neighbours involved, or the local school and youth group, the dog walkers and the football players you get different points of view and lots of willing volunteers. A formally set up group will also find it easier to raise money.

What sort of group do we need?
You can have a group where you just agree amongst yourselves what you want to do and get on with it. But if you want to raise funds you will need to be a bit more formal. You will need a constitution, a chair, secretary, treasurer and an Annual General Meeting (AGM). If you need to raise lots of money you may want to think about becoming a registered charity or even a registered company.

Chair, Secretary, Treasurer, Constitution - what do we need?
Most groups usually start with a constitution. This is a declaration of the aims of your group and how you are going to meet those aims. It doesn’t need to be a complicated legal document and BOSF have some examples you can start from. As a minimum you will a Chairperson (you can call them whatever you like) to co-ordinate activity, a Secretary to record decisions and deal with correspondence and a Treasurer to record and handle any money you receive or spend. There is lots of help available if you’ve never done anything like this before (see over the page). You can add in any other posts that are relevant to your project eg Bat Officer, Publicity Officer, Volunteer Secretary.

What shall we do?
To get your group off to a good start you need an easy to organise, cheap, attention grabbing activity. Try a fancy dress litter pick, collect everyone’s christmas trees and get the council to chip them, get local children to sign a petition using their handprints on a long sheet of wallpaper, hold a table top sale to raise money, set up a carol singing evening, plant a wild flower meadow. BOSF members have done all these things and are happy to share experiences and advice. Make sure you collect the contact details of the people who come for future reference.

Money!
Very quickly you will discover that your group needs some money - even if it’s just little amounts for postage and posters. You can raise money by:

Asking your members for a subscription or membership fee
Applying to your local Councillors for a donation from the Community Chest
Asking local businesses for financial support or gifts in kind
Making an application to the Lottery through Awards for All
Holding a table top sale or similar event
Making an application to a grant making body or a trust.

There is plenty of help available from BOSF members and other organisations if you are new to fundraising.

Organising Your Group

Who is going to do the work?
The first job is to make a list of what the group wants to achieve and what the priorities are. This inevitably means work and the most important rule to ensure the survival of your group is not to try and do it all by yourself.

Your constitution will have set out the main jobs/officers that need to be done to enable the group to run effectively - these are usually - Chair, Treasurer and Secretary. Here is a very quick guide to what you need to do.

Being the Chair/man/woman/person
It doesn’t matter what you call yourself any of the above will work.

The Chair has 2 main roles:-

Ensuring the smooth running of meetings
Guiding the group’s projects & activities

When you drew up your constitution you may have included a Vice-Chair. This job can be very specific with responsibility for a particular project or general as a standin/ supporter for the Chair.

Being the Secretary
The Secretary’s job can be as large or small as they want. The minimum is to keep a record of decisions taken at meetings - the Minutes. But the job can also include publicity about meetings and events, maintaining membership lists, producing newsletters, receiving and sending any of the group’s correspondence and managing a website. In reality it’s usually easier for these jobs to be split up. See the section below on “Any Other Jobs”. It is also worth thinking about taking turns at being the minute taker. If the Secretary is always the minute taker they don’t get the same chance to participate in meetings - an alternative is to record the meeting and type the minutes up later.. See the section “What Should Go in the Minutes” for some more information.

Being the Treasurer
All group members share responsibility for the money, The Treasurer’s job is to keep accurate records to enable them to do so.

The main jobs are:-

Open a bank account
Keep track of all income and expenditure - keep all receipts and invoices
Monitor that expenditure is in line with the groups wishes
Check bank statements
Help other officers produce budgets for projects and activities
Provide regular reports for meetings about income and expenditure
Produce an annual statement of the organisation’s accounts and arrange for an independent examination or full audit if appropriate. You should present the statement to the AGM and write the financial part of the annual report.

Too much work?
Any of these jobs can be done as a jobshare and you can always ask for help. Don’t get lumbered doing something you don’t want to.

Any Other Jobs
You can have as many job titles as you like and these will depend on the size of your group and the group’s interests.

These are examples from other groups:-

Membership Secretary
Publicity Officer
Wildlife Officer
Dog Walkers Officer
Entertainments Officer

The list is endless, but beware of giving everyone a job title. There is a tendency in groups to see someone with a job title and assume they are going to do all the work. The aim is for people with job titles to identify what needs doing and to find the volunteers to help do it - not to take on all the work themselves.

The most important part of your job is to train and support the person who is going to take over from you!

Agenda and Minutes
The agenda must include:-

Date, time and venue of the meeting
Introductions and apologies
Minutes - checking the minutes are an accurate of the previous meeting
Matters Arising - anything from the previous minutes that needs a short answer - it is not an opportunity to have the discussion from the last meeting again.
Any Other Business - anything that has come up since the agenda was produced that has to be dealt with before the next meeting

The Minutes must record:-

Who attended the meeting & apologies
Decisions taken
Who has volunteered to undertake tasks and a timescale
Agreement to spend money

You don’t need to write down the whole discussion.

How to Organise a Meeting?

How often should we meet?
Once a month is usual - but you may meet more often if you have a project to plan or a deadline to meet. You may meet less often over the summer holidays or during the winter if you have fewer jobs to do. Aim to meet at least 8 times a year.

When and Where should we meet?
Pick a time of day when as many people as possible can come - think about those with children to care for in the evenings or people getting back from work. You will never find a time or day to suit everyone so consider rotating the day of the week and even the time of day.

How long should a meeting last?
After an hour your meeting will become less effective - aim for an hour by setting time limits against each item on the agenda - and stick to them.

Chairing the meeting
The Chair needs to:-

Allow everyone the opportunity to contribute to discussions
Summarise discussion before a vote or at the end of the item
Check that the Secretary has been able to record the decision
Resolve disagreements through discussion.
Be neutral but also in charge.

It is important that the Chair does not dominate meetings. An effective Chair will ensure that they do not push their own views but facilitate a discussion to enable others to put forward their views.

Who Can Help?

Birmingham Open Spaces Forum
Help getting your group started…and beyond.
E-mail: info@bosf.org.uk
Tel: 0121 451 2336
You can also find other groups in your area.