Ringing Forums

I know young ringers in the London area who keep a record of how many towers they have been to and would enjoy Open Day opportunities to ring at new towers.
So with less new ringers in the last forty years than the forty years (ish?) before there will be less of them but I’d say there is a still a proportion who are tower grabbers and more who are interested in a day out once in a while.

Speculation time here, but what could be the factors behind fewer people going on

• Less spare time? - an open day eats up time on a weekend, and people tend to have busy lives. An ongoing trend throughout ringing and hobbies/volunteering in general - hours are down across the board.
• Maybe people don't like dashing around to get to all the towers? A more relaxed schedule with fewer towers might make for a better balance between energy and tower grabbing.
• You need a car or someone to share a lift with to take part - petrol isn't cheap these days either.

Less dashing around could also increase the quality of the ringing; I for one certainly wouldn't be up to much by tower number 8!

That said, I'd echo @Lucy Chandhial's observation - there are plenty of young people into tower grabbing, so I don't think Open Days will be going away any time soon. There may be fewer people coming onto the tours and thus a lower level of income, but probably still enough to be worthwhile (particularly in areas where Open Days are less common).

I think Open Days need to be viewed as more than just revenue generating exercises, because they are not really very good at doing that these days. Although there is little direct benefit to the organising area, Open Days are part of the joy and variety of ringing and in organsin them we provide opportunities and experiences for our fellow ringers. They are particularly good for giving young ringers the opportunity to ring at different places - I certainly scoured the classified section of the RW when I was a young learner looking for tower grab opportunities - and if you can throw in a few rare towers to satisfy avid grabbers there can be something for everyone.

I am picking up this thread again, having been on the W&P open day yesterday. What an excellent event! Plenty of good refreshments - why had I bothered to take a packed lunch and a flask? Helpers and marshals at every tower, people organising traffic, etc etc. Even a prize for those who grabbed all 24 towers! That was relatively readily managed and I saw several people in Petersfield collecting their winnings!

I may have been fortunate, but we had some good ringing, There were a lot of people about - both regular participants at open days adding to a nearly full set of ticks in their copy of Dove, and also quite a few younger ringers and those who were having their first taste of an open day.

So I do hope that the effort put into the event by the District and Guild will be well rewarded by a large contributing to the Ropley bell fund.

More generally, it looks as if open days could still be a success - it will be interesting to hear the views of the organisers. Thank you to them for what they provided on Saturday. It was a long day for us as participants so it must have been all the more so for those involved in the organisation! Thank you again!

I also went to the W&P open day and agree with Alison that it was an excellent event. For me a key to its success was the advertised and delivered support of local ringers to ensure that there was always a band for visiting ringers to ring with. The result of this was that ringers could travel with confidence that they would get to ring on and hear the complete rings at towers they visited. As a result ringers came from far and wide and there were queues to ring at many towers I visited. The helpers you stood by to ensure that the rings could be rung may have sometimes felt redundant; they were not, without them being there the queues would not have been there.

I can only echo Alison's praise and thanks to all the W&P members who made the event work so well. It's an example of good practice that we can all learn from.

I agree with the comments made by Paul and Alison about the excellent organisation of the W&P open day.

It was a long day for most of us and was extremely well attended, something that I have to say I have not found on many open days these last few years, more on the level that was found on those I attended in the early 1970s.

What I am inclined to wonder, as a Guild Master who has previously suggested similar in my own Guild and not found any support, is how much the open day brought in. I know that it has brought a large amount of publicity among the ringing fraternity for the cause (the restoration of the lovely Gillett and Johnson six at Ropley after the devastating fire) and that it generated a tremendous amount of work for the many marshalls (who did an excellent job, almost all of them in several towers) but the bottom line for the organisers has got to be financial gain for their perposes as well as contributing to the ticks in the Dove's of various people who have traveled from many miles away and who will not likely be returning soon.

Was the whole event worthwhile from Ropley and the W&P's point of view?

I ask the question as a suggestion has been made by another member of our Guild Management Committee that we should organise an open day to benefit our BRF. Whilst I am delighted to have an aly in my campaign to hold an open day, and it appears that it has gained enough support that it will take place, that extra information will be useful to inform doubters.

I thought I saw a figure of £3,000+ somewhere?

That makes it a worthwhile proposition!

The last time that I heard any figures there had been a very full and very well organised day laid on and the total income, before expenses, was marginally over £1,000.

Hello Everyone......I am very pleased to confirm that we raised £3625 for Ropley Bell Restoration! We had an absolutely fantastic day hosting the event, and were bowled over by the number of people attending (it was in excess of 130 at some Towers), and delighted by their generosity and friendliness. Sincere thanks to everyone that attended!

The open day in aid of Ropley was an excellent well managed event, and showed just how generous the ringing community can be, not just financially but also in terms of their time and energy taken to organise it. However, it was in aid of a specific project.

Much has changed over the last 50 years since many of our Society BRF’s were established. Thanks to many decades of fundraising and much volunteer labour, there are now far fewer unringable towers, and many rings now hang in modern frames, with modern fittings, which are far less expensive to maintain.
We often hear calls to raise more money for Society BRF’s, but in recent decades money has generally been coming in faster than it is spent. The surplus is often invested short term deposit accounts such as the CofE CBF Deposit Fund. In 1995-7 a CCCBR survey showed that there were about 5.3 years’ worth of reserves held in Society BRF’s. Nowadays this has doubled to about 10.6 years’ worth of reserves.
Taking figures from CBF’s factsheet, If a BRF constantly had £50k invested in that fund over the last ten years it would have grown to £54,160. However, to match the CPI measure of inflation over the same period, it would need to grow to £66,600, so there would have been a loss of £12,440 in purchasing power.

I know that some will argue about which is the most relevant measure of inflation, and investment in short term deposit accounts may have been appropriate when there was a faster turnaround. However, the point is that when members see their money held in the BRF for a long period of time before is spent, and it depreciates as it is held in short term deposit accounts, will they contribute more? In real terms, members are donating less than they did a few decades ago. Martin Lewis would not be impressed!

CCLA, which manages the CBF Deposit Fund on behalf of the CofE, offers actively managed longer term investment funds for the CofE and other charities. It is recommended that these are held for a minimum term of five years, and they have a target of beating CPI inflation. The COIF Charities Investment Fund has reported an annualised return (increased on average each year) of 9.44% over the last ten years. Over this period, it has beaten its target of matching CPI + 4% to produce an annualised return of CPI + 6.68%, significantly enhancing the purchasing power of the money invested.

The Oxford Diocesan Guild Bell Fund has been investing money not needed for the next three years in a basket of longer-term investments, based on advice from their Diocesan financial adviser, for many years. Consequently, it has accumulated a large investment fund, the income from which now helps the fund to offer grants of 20% of the cost of eligible works. If only more societies did the same, they could generate far more money to spend on their bell restoration projects. Alternatively, they could invest more money on more welcoming ringing environments and towers where ringing can thrive, as Robin Shipp and Simon Linford argue in the Ringing 2030 thread. Or they could do a mix of both.

https://www.ccla.co.uk/investments/investor/charities-and-churches

PS Talking to Annie Hall, Secretary of the Coventry Diocesan Guild earlier about another matter, I learnt that investment of a large bequest that they had received a few years ago is managed by the Diocese and held in long term investments. As a result of the income that this generates, the Guild BRF is now offering grants of up to 50% to major projects.