Secretary of Petersfield Society

The post of Honorary Secretary of the Petersfield Society becomes vacant in June 2023. We are looking for an enthusiastic volunteer to take over this role.

For information about the Society, its aims and objectives and its role in the community of Petersfield, please register your interest today.

The Hon. Secretary would automatically, on election, become one of the Trustees of the Society, which is a registered Charity.

The main duties of the Secretary are:

• Organising Meetings – The Trustees of the Society meet formally, as the Executive Committee, six times a year, on the second Friday of alternate months. The Secretary is responsible for preparing for these meetings by reminding members 1-2 weeks before; collecting papers, which include reports from the convenors of the four activity groups; and circulating the papers by email prior to the meeting.
• Taking Minutes of Meetings, writing up the minutes after the meeting, and circulating these to the Committee members.
• Dealing with external correspondence. Nowadays, this is nearly all by email. Items of correspondence in most cases need to be forwarded to the relevant Trustee, most usually the convenor of one of the activity groups. These are then reported on (listed) as one of the papers presented to the Executive Committee. In practice there are on average, 10-20 such items of correspondence in each 2 monthly period.
• Preparing for and facilitating the Annual General Meeting, normally held in June. This involves ensuring that an official Notice of AGM is published 21 days before; preparing the Annual Report of the Trustees, collated mainly from the input of other officers; determining which Trustees need to be re-elected; preparing the agenda and afterwards writing up the minutes.

Currently, in the absence of a Chairman, the day to day running of the Society is carried out by a management team, consisting of four or five Trustees, who meet, informally, once a month. The Secretary would need to be closely involved in this team. If and when a new Chairman is found, then close liaison with the Chairman will be expected.

If you are interested in the position then please register as soon as possible. A new prospective Secretary could be invited to Executive Committee meetings to meet the team and get a better idea of how they work. All the help required would be available from the retiring Secretary both before and after formally taking on the role. The above is a description of what the role entails at the moment – a new Secretary will, in time, no doubt mould the job to fit in with their own established ways of working, and in time, find that working on the committee and with the other Trustees is rewarding and enjoyable.

Skills

• Admin and office
• Organisational
• Minute-taking