Wednesday, 21 March 2007

I awoke about 2:30 am bright and alert. Perhaps the manopause? Anyway, by 3:30 am I was in the office thankful of the chance of a few hours to catch up on things. By 6:00 am I had e-mailed my budget proposals off to my trustees.

The budget shows turnover of £355,944, or which more than £250,000 is already pretty much assured. This is a big luxury: I know of other charities that start the financial year with expenditure commitments of £300,000, a fundraising target of £300,000, and perhaps three months’ turnover in reserve. The big potential hole is our Reaching Communities project. If our bid is successful, we will be fine. Without this money, things look pretty tight.

After a bit more work and a few brief meetings, I attended a Big Lottery Awards for All event at the Beechen Grove Baptist Church. This was organised jointly by WCVS and the Big Lottery. Turnout was good, but a long way from excellent.

After this, I returned to WCVS for a meeting with Watford’s Mayor Dorothy, Cllr Shirena Counter (portfolio holder for Leisure and Community), Cate Hall (Corporate Director) and Sarah Pinnock (Senior Grants Officer).

The purpose of the meeting was to talk through the key areas where we can work together toward shared objectives. Of course there are many areas where we could work together, but resources are limited; so where can we best work together?

We focused on four key areas. Two of the four were pretty obvious: a better grants programme and a better voluntary sector. "No-brainers", as it was once fashionable to say. The second two areas were community development and community cohesion. Both are immensely complicated areas. We made some progress and set out a way forward. We didn’t reach any hard a fast conclusions, but that wasn’t the point.

The point was that four senior figures from WBC spent two hours talking to their CVS to discuss what was best for Watford. That was impressive. That is what makes Watford such a special place.

At 3:00 pm I had fully intended to go to the Arthritis Care AGM. But my lack of sleep was catching up on me fast. I did a final few bits and pieces, talked to one or two colleagues, and headed off home. I arrived home about 6:00, and fell asleep about 8:00.