fausto copy wrote:Karen Sutton wrote:Regulator wrote:"As your North West councillors we feel that this will provide increasing financial resources to our local member groups to support the excellent activities that they offer to you as members."
Does this mean that the CTC is going to increase the subvention to member groups from the miserly 18p per member per year that it currently is? First I've heard of it...
If they were to put that on the table as an incentive now I would be more likely to regard it as a bribe. As a Membership Registrar who writes to new members (the stamp alone is more than 18p) I am aware of how little we receive at present. In fact I'd be very surprised if we had been paid ours yet. (Makes note to self to check with Treasurer).
I'm not aware that our club have ever received any "subvention".
As we used to be a section of a DA I suppose that was inevitable.
However, since we've become a "member group" I presume we would be entitled to something.
Does anyone know if we need to claim it or is there a procedure to go through?
The "Allocation Grant" (the 18p per member) was traditionally available to DAs. Of course they are now termed "Member Groups". This new way of calling both the old DAs and Sections, and new Registered CTC Groups by the same name can cause confusion. It does not mean that all Member Groups are equal in the way they are treated by National Office. The DAs were defined by postcode boundaries. These boundaries were drawn up many years ago. Each DA would receive a database of all the members in their postcode area (if they chose to receive it). They could then, if they wished, claim the Allocation Grant after submitting their annual accounts each Autumn. You can claim per member on the database on 1st September each year.The claim form is sent out with the AGM pack soon after 1st September. Under the new Rules for Member Groups you can set up new Groups so that there may be both old and new Groups operating in a postcode area. However the new Group cannot claim the Allocation Grant for the area they operate in because that postcode area is allocated to the old group.
I am Membership Registrar for South Manchester CTC. We were part of Manchester DA until October 2008. Manchester DA claimed the allocation grant for all of Manchester (around 2500 CTC members). However the DA was really just a Committee. All the rides and events were organised by the Sections, who did not get any funding. South Manchester Section became South Manchester CTC under the renaming process; and we decided we wanted to be completely independent of Manchester & District CTC. (The new name of Manchester DA). By doing this we could split off our postcodes from the old DA and submit our own Allocation Grant claims. It was a fairly protracted process in order for us to be independent, and involved the old DA agreeing to it.
For a lot of Groups it may not be worthwhile claiming. But our database has about 1200 members; about 50% of the membership which was on the Manchester list, so it is worth it for us.
So the answer to whether your Member Group can claim is: only if you have been allocated your own postcode area of the membership. You can then claim the 18p for every CTC member in that area, whether they are active in your group or not.