GALHA needs you!

It's vital that GALHA has a strong Committee to take forward its mission. If you can contribute a few hours a week, we hope you'll consider putting yourself forward. We desire a good mix of gender, race, age, experience and skillset. It's unfortunate but geographically you'll need to be close enough to London to make the Committee meetings every couple of months.

If you're thinking of joining the Committee, please first read 'About GALHA' and 'Vision and mission'; you'll need to be a paying member.

What the Committee is

The GALHA Committee is a group of up to 9 unpaid volunteers. It has a Secretary, a Chair and a Treasurer and up to 6 other members. Committee members share responsibility, co-ordinated by the Chair, for GALHA's strategic direction and priorities, sustainability, decision-making and meeting legal responsibilities. They then take on work is specific areas as they see fit.

Who decides the Committee

Every year the present Committee automatically steps down and a new Committee must be democratically elected.
To be eligible for nomination to the Committee each must be a paid-up member.
It is not necessary to be physically present at the AGM to put yourself forward for election.
The AGM takes a vote on the proposed nominees from the paid-up members present (at present postal and proxy votes are not permitted).
The Chair, Secretary and Treasurer are decided by the new Committee, rather than directly elected by the AGM.
Between AGMs the present Committee can co-opt GALHA members onto the Committee, so long as there is space available.
Committee members can leave at any time, though the more notice is provided the better the organisation can cope.

About Committee work

As a valued Committee member you:

1. Attend the Committee meetings

These are held in central London around every 2 months for 3 hours at a time. The dates are agreed as best for availability. Travel expenses can be submitted to the Treasurer for full reimbursement.

It's a formal meeting with an agenda distributed beforehand of usually 15 - 20 items - but the tone is friendly and constructive. A comfort break is generally taken mid-way. We try (and generally succeed) to make decisions by consensus rather than majority.

Water/refreshments are available and you're welcome to bring along a coffee! Afterwards there's an open invite to trot to the pub or for an informal lunch together.

2. Read and contribute to the email discussion list on Committee matters

Traffic to this list averages 5 - 15 messages per day. Though most of these are for information only and don't require further action, this is a large volume (GALHA is quite active!) so it's important to:

1) Put in place a filter to separate Committee emails from your other email
2) Develop a system for yourself whereby you can read and contribute to the discussions without it taking over or creating an undue burden e.g. a set time you review the emails once a day.

You'll have the support of other Committee members in developing something that works for you.

3. Do other work as appropriate

This depends on how much time you want to dedicate to GALHA each week, your skillset, aptitudes and experience and, perhaps most importantly, what you think is the best way for you to contribute to GALHA in helping it achieve its aims.

Areas of work

In no particular order, the following are the broad categories of work within or supporting the Committee:

Financial (lead by Treasurer): financial strategy, budget-setting, record-keeping, reporting and liaising with auditor.
Administration (lead by Secretary): Managing general enquiries by email or phone, dealing with requests for information, maintaining records of all kinds; ensuring GALHA meets any legal or regulatory requirements.
Membership: maintaining membership records and sending out packs to new members; member recruitment strategy; widening participation and diversity; strengthening GALHA's democratic credentials.
Fundraising and grant-applications: strategy, developing relationships with funders both groups and individuals, submitting applications/requests.
Newsletter: content generation; copyediting/proofing; design and layout; arranging printing and post.
Online: adding new capabilites to our website; sourcing new content for the site; ensuring the technical infrastructure is sound; supporting the online shop; engaging with the Facebook community; making the most of our meetup.com group; generating links to kindred websites.
Press officer: generating news-worthy press releases and distributing; developing relationships with media outlets and journalists; working to place articles about the organisation or topics of thought-leadership in the media; co-ordinating media work/responses.
Monthly events: generating ideas for new events beyond the current calendar, running the events; running the bar at the events; promoting events; taking photographs and distributing. Includes annual Pride programme.
Advocacy and liaison: creating government submissions on topics of interest; lobbying other powerful groups, maintaining links with kindred organisations such as the BHA, SPES.
Annual event organisation: arranging the annual weekend conference (venue, itinerary, bookings), arranging the annual lunch (speaker, venue, bookings).

The Committee, ideally being the full quota of 9 people, allocates the above areas so that each Committee member has responsibility within 1 or 2 areas. New members of the Committee should attend 1 or 2 Committee meetings before deciding what areas suit them best and how they can engage with them.

Non-Committee contribution

If you're not located to travel to Committee meetings or the commitment to that and the emails doesn't suit, we still encourage you to volunteer any help you can. Maybe you can support the website, write articles for the newsletter or distribute GALHA literature locally?

There are many ways you can contribute without joining the Committee so please let us know if that's something you can offer. We have non-Committee members helping in areas from Prides to events to managing the online presence.

Interested? Get in touch

I'm happy to answer any questions you have by phone or email. I'm happy to meet up for a quick coffee or beer with anyone interested to talk further. I'd also encouraged attending a Committee meeting as an observer to help make a decision.

Please contact Adam Knowles, chair@galha.org.