Weekly email 29 October

Watch the RDA AGM & Awards live on You Tube

The RDA AGM & Awards will be broadcast live on YouTube from 10:30 to midday on Friday 6 November. Simply head to our YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/rdanational . Please encourage your volunteers and wider RDA community to tune in by sharing this link.

If you have any questions about the AGM please contact Amanda Perkins aperkins@rda.org.uk 

Report into activity levels

The report following the survey into current activity levels is now complete and can be read or downloaded at myrda.org.uk/assets/RDA-Activity-Levels-Report.pdf. By the end of this week I will be issuing a press release about the report and it will be on the main RDA website in our news section. The report makes several recommendations about how RDA UK (which includes National Office staff and National, Regional & County volunteers) might respond to the findings, and we will be following up with our plans to do this in the coming weeks.

Vacancy: Great London Regional Chair

Mike Locke has done a fantastic job as Regional Chair for Greater London, and he is now stepping down. We are looking within our RDA community for his replacement, so please do get in touch with Faye McKenning in the office (fmckenning@rda.org.uk) if you would like to find out more about the role – or any other RDA UK volunteer positions currently vacant.

Clare Balding’s new book – an opportunity for fundraising

Clare Balding’s new book, Heroic Animals, is now out, and she is keen to support RDA groups through the book if possible.

I have a plan, but at the moment I’m only looking for an initial show of interest so I can see if it’s going to work and how best to coordinate it.

The idea is that your group buys the books that you want through normal channels (currently on Amazon for £13.60 and in Sainsbury’s for £10 – rrp £20), then you get in touch with a coordinator at National Office (possibly me but this hasn’t been decided yet) to request however many bookplates you need, which we will get signed by Clare. You then add these bookplates to the books, which can then be used for fundraising, raffles etc (depending on how popular this is, we should be able to arrange personal dedications).

It would be best if there was just one person from participating groups coordinating things at your end.

Let me know if you think you might be interested. And if you have an idea of how many books you think you might want signed that will help too. If it looks like a goer I’ll set this up asap.

Page Last Updated: November 5, 2020