Friday, 30 March 2007

The reliable and delightful Sue Tilbury has now moved on and I must simply get used to it.

Today was quiet as several people were using up their final leave days of the year. But Vanessa came in anyway, taking pity on me I believe.

Bad news form the Big Lottery

In the morning's post we received news that our bid to the Big Lottery’s Reaching Communities programme had fallen at the last hurdle. It is always difficult to get bids accepted and it’s always hard to understand exactly why any particular bid fails or succeeds.

In this instance, the letter simply read difficult decision … other bids more fully met our requirements … but this of course tells us nothing. Our bid linked together all major local providers of adult education, it had clearly defined and measurable outcomes, it had clear community benefits, and it linked very well to the local strategic plan.

Vanessa and I talked and agreed, at least to our satisfaction, why our bid had failed: because it was too complicated. We decided that if assessors and decision-makers need too long to understand an application they will resent the extra effort involved and look for an easier alternative (especially if the funder has previous bad experiences of complex bids unravelling). To this extend, grant-makers are like flowing water: looking for the easiest route downhill. I expect there is a Law somewhere that states something similar.

Supervision

After dealing with a few of the more urgent e-mails, at 10:00 am I had a supervision meeting with my Chair of Trustees Pam Handley. We enjoyed a wide-ranging discussion about WCVS's plans, budgets and staffing, reaching some helpful decisions along the way. In particular, Pam agreed the 2007-08 budget on behalf of the trustees - and now I must re-jig the budget to reflect the morning's bad news from the Big Lottery.

After Pam left, I wrote up the minutes of last night’s meeting: the sooner this sort of thing is done, the better. Again, I am sure there is a Law somewhere that states this.

Workload

Throughout the afternoon, I battled to clear through my in tray. On Monday, I should be out of the office all day at meetings, I then have Tuesday in the office before having time off to get married. The calculation was easy: will I be able to clear sufficient work on Tuesday so that I can relax while getting married on Thursday?

The answer was also easy: No.

So I canceled my attendance at Monday's East of England regional meeting on the Capacitybuilders programme. Jacquie Hime from North Herts will ably represent Hertfordshire's interests alone: thank you Jacquie.