Ringing Forums

Hi

Here in Devon we've begun collating information from our local contacts - here is a request we sent round in this month's newssheet :

Help us identify churches At Risk
The recent Central Council meeting ended with a thought provoking presentation about the likelihood of churches closing in future with a particular focus on identifying those with bells that may be At Risk.

The presentation is available to review on YouTube if you missed it :

https://www.youtube.com/live/Xv_VhWRj8NQ?si=6Vh4M6dC41s_mNhH

This checklist was presented - if the answer is Yes to the majority of these questions then it is possible your church may be At Risk.

<snipped image from presentation showing checklist>

Figures were presented suggesting there may be quite a high number of churches in Devon which would unfortunately pass the checklist test and there are more rings of bells in Devon than any other county so there is a possibility that some rings we are currently able to visit may become unavailable.

It was also suggested that early knowledge of the possibility of church closure is really helpful to enable planning for possible re-location of bells to another church.

So we would like your help please?

Please take a look at the checklist and let the branch officers know if the number of Yes answers is in the majority for your church.

" ... pull together a conversation with them about improvements or adjustments ... "

The Guild of Devonshire Ringers has rolled out membermojo to all members this year after conducting a pilot over the last 12 months - we have already found benefits we weren't expecting, including an increase in members paying their subscription or rejoining - we believe this is because it's easy to do at any time - you don't need to remember to hand over cash at a practice

And for the first time we have a simple way of sending email exclusively to our paid-up members. If any of those members don't renew their membership next year then the system will automatically remove them from the mailing list.

I would be interested in discussing improvements though - such as the ability to capture free text Options when a member makes a Store purchase - membermojo support have already told me this is on their development backlog.

And our Trustees would be interested if there were to be a way of creating a segmented system at a reduced cost while still meeting our operational requirements.

At it's recent AGM members of the Guild of Devonshire Ringers agreed to start using membermojo to manage our membership list and subscriptions from the start of 2024.

Members of our Guild Committee have already been trialling the service but we'd be interested in hearing experiences from other Societies who've already rolled this out.