proved successful, other aspects of Masonic activity are now being actively discussed in RCGs, with best practice being shared across Provinces. • The Membership Working Party was particularly active, focusing on the perennial issue of attracting and engaging members and it continued to propose and implement a number of new initiatives. Much of our focus and investment in IT, as more fully explored by the CEO in his Report, continued to be in the creation and delivery of more accurate and timely data, which will enable Provinces and other units to track performance in this regard. • We further refined training programmes for new Provincial Grand Masters, as we move to much clearer definition of what we expect of our leaders and divert resources to train them appropriately.
“Talented and skilled people who care enough about the organisation and its future to make real and valuable contributions”
• As noted elsewhere, we continued to maintain close working relationships with our own Charities, most particularly The Masonic Charitable Foundation - The Freemasons’ Charity – whose enthusiastic support, resources and expertise were invaluable in helping us achieve our Covid-19 response across the country. • We continued to involve more Provincial Grand Masters and other Metropolitan and Provincial officers on the many central Committees and Working Parties: the scale and breadth of the issues to be addressed can only be contemplated by harnessing the talents of a broad spectrum of our members, encouraging them to greater involvement in development of important strategic and tactical initiatives. • We continued to prioritise investment in Communications, both internally and externally. Internally, this embraced, inter alia, mobilising the strength of the Provincial Communications Officer network; advising on Provincial Websites, Social Media and Press Releases; launching the “First Rising”, an e-newsletter, the first time that UGLE has provided regular and direct updates directly to our members. Externally, the amount of positive media comment on Freemasons’ activities during the pandemic has been most encouraging and we shall continue momentum here by launching our new website later in the year and rolling out other programmes further to enhance our public profile. COVID-19 RESPONSE AT FREEMASONS’ HALL Whilst talk so far has been of UGLE’s civic and charitable response to the national pandemic, I must also talk of the actions which the Board, working with the CEO and his staff, took to mitigate the financial and human impact of Covid-19 on UGLE itself. The financial impact is
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