Core Group Members needed to support our wonderful Farm Team

SCA is more than just a veg box scheme: it’s a community. And it needs the involvement of members in order to function and thrive. We have an exceptional Farm Team who manage the farm, look after the land, and produce nutritious, delicious food for us throughout the whole year. And they need a ‘Core Group’ of trustees to have a governance and oversight role to ensure that everything is running smoothly and to handle administration and finance matters.

At our Annual General Meeting in October, a couple of our Core Group members will be standing down, having worked incredibly hard to see the organisation through a few quite turbulent years. So, we now need more people to step up and join the group. As a community co-operative we must have a minimum of 5 Directors (the legal name for the Core Group members) but the more we have, the less work there is for each of them, so we’d really love to create a team of 8, with each leading on a specific area:

  • Events organising (Advent Fayre, Bonfire, summer camping, fundraising ideas…)
  • Community Outreach (Educational Visits Partnership Projects, Food hub liaison…)
  • Member engagement (keeping in touch with members, recruiting more members, engaging volunteers)
  • Human Resources (Looking after our staff and Core Group members)
  • Governance (making sure we’re legal and following good practice as a business and a cooperative)
  • Communications (Overseeing our external communications via our website and internally via Facebook and newsletters)
  • Infrastructure Projects (Supporting the Farm Team with planning and building things like compost bays, installing renewable energy, rainwater harvesting systems …)
  • Farming (supporting the Farm Team with some of the admin involved in keeping our BDA accreditation, obtaining Government Farming Subsidies etc)
  • IT (making sure we’ve got effective technology and that we’re using it legally)

If you have any experience in any of these areas, we ‘d love to hear from you. Although no previous experience in agriculture is necessary, it would also be bonus! Above all, we’re looking for people with confident decision-making skills and an ability to see the bigger picture. You may also ned to occasionally provide hands-on support for one off events although we’re also aiming to build up a “Skills Bank” of members who can be called on for such occasions to spread the load wider.

Although being a member of the Core Group is an unpaid it is a hugely rewarding and inspiring experience and could be really beneficial in developing your personal career goals and interests. And it’s not a permanent commitment: Core Group members usually expect to serve for 2 or 3 years.

Please think carefully about whether you could help SCA to continue to flourish or if you can think of another SCA member you’d like to nominate.

If you’d like to know more, why not come along to a Core Group to meet us, and see how we operate? Or, for an informal chat, contact one of Core Group members below:

Seb Billing Sebastian.billing@stroudcommunityagriculture.org

Clare Hudman Clare.hudman@stroudcommunityagriculture.org

Sally Pickering Sally.pickering@stroudcommunityagriculture.org

Ronnie Whittington Ronnie.whittington@stroudcommunityagriculture.org

Too busy to join the Core Croup? There are other ways to get involved. Read more here.

Last years AGM
Last year’s AGM