4 minute read
From the Office
Many of you still send us cheques to renew your membership. Please help us stay safe by opting out of this method of payment, as otherwise we will have to physically go to a bank to submit the cheques.
d.Some 2021 dates to put in your diaries
Advertisement
The following dates are important to remember:
1.15th February
Submitting proposed motions and/or nominations for Council membership to be considered by Council for the 2021 AGM If you wish Council to consider a motion to put it forward at the 2020 AGM, you have to submit the motion to the STAT office no later than the above date with a full rationale and a proposer and a seconder. If your motion is rejected, you can still request that it is submitted at the AGM by obtaining the signatures of 5% of the voting membership and submitting it to STAT no later than the 20th March. If you wish to know more about it, please email us directly at info@stat.org.uk.
2. 28th February
Membership renewal deadline Please ensure that your renewal fee for this year’s subscription reaches us no later than this date.
3.17th July
STAT AGM We hope we will be able to have our AGM at Resource for London and we have booked the space to that effect. We will keep you updated as we are getting closer to that date.
Ilia Daoussi, General Manager
FROM THE OFFICE
A year like no other
If there is one thing I feel 2020 brought us face to face with, it is how little control we have over change and yet how the only constant in our lives is change. Just a year ago, around this time, nothing would have prepared us for what was to come.
As a Society we responded quickly, and to the best of our abilities, to ensure we continued to support you all. From March to December 2020, STAT Council had nine additional meetings, on top of the six business ones normally scheduled, plus eight ORC meetings; a total of 23 meetings, ranging from 1.5 to 4 hours each. I can’t tell you how many emails these meetings generated (both in preparation for and following on from them) because it is impossible to count them. During this time a total of 74 email-newsletters were sent out, with approximately 40 of them dedicated to providing guidance and information regarding Covid measures, prior to which a dedicated team would spend an inordinate amount of time in trying to interpret the different reports and present them to you in a comprehensible way.
Council was very much aware of the financial difficulty you would find yourselves in and quickly agreed to a concession on the STAT membership fees for 2020, replicating towards the end of the year, and making that possible through reducing costs, including having STATnews published online, and creating a virtual office for STAT; decisions made neither lightly nor hastily.
STAT, true to its Alexandrian nature, changed, evolved, broke away from old habits and introduced new ones to help get through this indescribable year. It’s still an ongoing process. I can personally share this much: it has been really hard to keep a free neck. For the 16 years I have been working here, this was the first time I felt a collective anxiety and the enormity of STAT’s responsibility.
It’s been an exhausting year, but it is now 2021, so let’s keep our fingers crossed and move…. onwards and upwards. I wish you all a very Happy New Year; brighter, kinder and safer.
Business as usual
a.2021 Subscriptions
In December 2020, the Office Team issued the 2021 invoices. If you have not received your 2020 invoice by now, please let us know asap. Please remember that the deadline for paying whole or part of your fee this year is the 28th February. If you have yet to settle any outstanding fees, as reported in the statements most of you received, please do so as soon as possible, as failure to do so will result to your membership being lapsed. For those of you paying via standing order (instruction you have personally given to your bank), please ensure you have updated the instalments to reflect the fact that our main bank is Barclays. Please check if you are still paying into the Co-operative bank, and ensure to update your instruction so that payment goes into Barclays (you can find the bank details on your invoice).
b.Changes in payment process
From January 2022, all membership payments for UK members will be processed via Direct Debit. If you are not on Direct Debit please contact us so that we can send you a mandate form. We kindly ask you not to leave this to the last minute and help us transition into this payment process smoothly.
