Wondering about offering some help to your organisation?
In Mid Lancs we are happy to use whatever time or skills you are able to offer,
whether a little or a lot, and in a non formal manner.
As with most charities, in the Ramblers, volunteers organise the day to day activities, not the central staff.
In our case, that is all done on a quite casual, friendly basis rather than formal committees and roles, and in general most volunters commonly commit about 1-3 hours every few months largely at a time of their choosing.
To comply with duty of care laws, the Ramblers has written descriotions of the structure a Group "can" employ, but in reality, and particularly in Mid Lancs, volunteers do the tasks that they have time for, and consider essential.
References to committees or roles is just a convenience of terminology.
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The Ramblers have around 120,000 members organised in about 50 "Areas" each with a number of "Groups".
Funding comes to Groups through the Areas from Central Office.
All of the walking, footpath, social and formal activities depend entirely on volunteers.
The functions Areas does, versus what Groups does, varies widely across the Organisation.
Here in Mid Lancashire Area, the Groups organise most of the activities while Area provides an overview, an interface with Central Office (CO) and local Council etc, and some ad hoc walking and footpath activities.
As mentioned above, our volunteers do the tasks that they have time for, and consider essential, rather than formal roles.
The following is an outline of the fairly essential "tasks" that need to be done for a Group or Area to function.
Ad Hoc - Groups and Areas inevitably have events, AGM's, socials, special days.
These run more smoothly with members helping with the event.
Occurs any time and whatever help you can offer is welcome.
Main Contact - One person in a group has to be labelled the main contact, some groups call it chairperson.
This is the main link with CO and Area, though I gather they are very rarely contacted by CO.
Commonly, this person runs a get together with the key group volunteers every few months, perhaps in a pub.
May get queries from members or volunteers on-going.
This can involve quite small amounts of time for a small group, though there is scope for doing much more to develop a group.
One main contact of a small group spends only about 30min a month on group business.
"Secretary" - a rather nonsense title for each of about six different tasks.
You will find references to Minutes Secretary, Group Secretary, Footpath Secretary, Membership Secretary and more.
Just IGNORE these titles and just think of "Tasks".
Minutes - however informal, someone has to keep a record of any meeting.
So attending a 1-2 hour meeting say quarterly and 30 min? producing minutes.
Membership tracking - Membership details are available on a secure Rambler website.
It's desirable to send out email greetings to new members to make them aware of group contacts and activities.
For small groups perhaps 1, for big groups perhaps 20, standard emails a month, say 5 - 30 min?
Likely to attend quarterly meeting not not essential.
Finances - Bigger groups tend to have a back account for the funding from CO. Small groups are funded in Area.
If there is a bank account, then someone has to manage those funds.
For most groups, the flow of money is simple. Typically room hire, team expenses, occassionally equipment.
Could be as little as say 10 items a year, to perhaps 100 for a large active group, The day to day task is not difficult.
There is a formal element to this role in the form of a budget exercise and end year report.
Help us available from the Area if needed for those.
Effort depends on the group size. Trivial for a small group, perhaps 1+hour/month for a large group?
Attendance at team meetings expected.
Co-ordination - there are mainly two "co-ordinating tasks". One for walks and one for footpaths
Walks Coordination - Walks are loaded onto some system. For most groups that's the Rambler system.
Some leaders load their own walks, some have a co-ordinator load them.
The co-ordinator is also likely to ensure that all the regular walk slots are filled for at least 5 weeks ahead.
The time involved depends heavily on how many leaders load their own walks, and how many walks are run.
We are moving toward most walk leaders being able to load their own walks.
The task could take 1-2 hours a month but likely to be reducing. Probably attends a quarterly sessions.
Walk Leader - not usually part of the "organising" team, but obviously vital.
Involves checking a walk (recce) and then leading the walk. So involves twice the time of a walk.
There is a lot of support and guidance available. The majority of walkers could lead walks.
Footpath Coordinator - Only a few groups have this task to do.
This is a similar situation to the walks co-ordinator in that footpath checkers send in reports and the co-ordinator keeps a record of them and may review them.
Difficult to estimate time but lets say 1+ hours a month and likely to attend quarterly sessions.
Footpath Checker - like walk leaders, not normally part of the organising team.
Takes on the task of, usually annually, walking over defined paths, usually in your local parish, and reporting any issues to the co-ordinator.
Takes whatever time it takes. Often done just as a focus on your own local walking.
Other Footpath - there are a number of tasks related to footpaths. Monitoring planning developments, contact with Parishes.
Groups do more or less of this as is possible with their volunteers.
Web Manager - Most of our groups have their own website. In almost all cases they are based on a system paid for by the Ramblers and supported by skilled volunteers. Three of the websites are run by Area.
Once set up, a lot of elements, such as showing walks, is done automatically.
Maintaining an established site is a minimal effort. Perhaps keeping some news section.
Time can range from almost nothing to significant effort if you have an interest in developing the site.
Web Page Manager - not a required task but someone can be given permission to edit the group pages that appear on the main Rambler site. Trivial irregular effort.
Emailing - All Groups and Areas nneed to be able to communicate with their members.
However, personal data such as emails has to be handled securely under GDPR laws.
The volunteer handling membership will have access to this data both for monitoring and to contact new members.
Each group will choose a means of emailing all the members. Someone needs to securely maintain the email contact list.
A good level of comfort with email systems and contact lists is prudent for this.
Area Chair - this is a significant role in the Ramblers, and goes hand in hand with the Area secretary, but there are actually very few mandatory tasks.
One could simply chair the quarterly Area Council (see below), and the annual AGM, and nothing more.
There are opportunities to be involved in CO zoom meetings about forward plans and to contribute to those plans.
There's likely to be queries to answer from CO, or from web enquiries or from members or the team, (neither many).
It is useful if the chair has some interest in the wider activities of the Ramblers and the development of the Area.
Doing the minimal would mainly be the time for meetings plus some queries.
Other than that depends on how involved you wish to be.
Area Secretary - As mentioned, this goes hand in hand with the Area Chair.
The Area secretary and the Area Chairperson are nearly viewed as one entity.
Almost all messages from CO to the chair, also go to the Secretary.
The normal roles of this secretary are; to forward relevant emails from CO to groups, typically to organise meetings, and often to take minutes at meetings.
As elsewhere, anyone can take on the last two tasks but only one person receives the emails.
The emails are probably forwarded on the fly as they arrive (not that many).
Meetings are commonly at the same place so trivial to organise.
Minutes as above for minute taking. Usually attends meetings.
Perhaps 1 hour/month but just splattered across the month.
Area Finances - Money flows from CO into Area bank accounts and from there to Groups.
As in groups, the day to day finance activities are pretty straightforward, and vary with Area activity level.
However, this role handles more formal activities in submissions to CO.
Also has a role of having oversight of groups financial use and providing help and support to treasurers.
While not essential, financial experience makes this role much more manageable.
In Mid Lancs probably about 1hour/month plus a few more hours for budget and end year work.
Other Area Tasks. Area can have much the same tasks as in groups but on a wider scope.
Membership - as with groups albeit overview of the Area. Helps to be comfort with number manipulations.
Footpath Coordinator - In the case of Area this is more involved with wider and external footpath issues, LCC and other committees.
Best handles by a member with a strong interest in footpath issues.
Area Council Member - Every Area is expected to have a place where the groups and individual members get together to oversee the whole Area activites.
Each group has a couple of places, the key Area volunteers and a number of individual members.
This is a two hour meeting quarterly reasonably accessible.
Any member is welcome to ask to join these sessions. Contact the Area Chair.
The examples above are just the common tasks. Groups or Areas may do quite a number of other and different tasks, perhaps Well Being walks, perhaps Children's walks, socials etc etc. These may be handled by different or the same volunteers as above.
If you feel you would like to contribute to the organisation, please just contact either your Group or Area contact and have a discussion about what you could help with.
Contact Area HERE