May '26
Membership/General Interest
May arrived and we had received small murmurings of support for the idea of a veterans club in Hook. So the potential show-stopper still needed resolving, who would come? There was a solution to show-stopper 2, venue, should we decide to continue with the project and show-stopper 3 could be managed away in order to get the thing going.
At the end of week one in May things started to happen. The poster campaign was ramped up and a positive response was received from the organisers of The Hook Village Show when we asked if there was space for us. All hands to the pumps in order to come up with an idea for a stand and prepare any literature that was deemed useful.
Within days of that news, Whitewater Health were able to send out the SMS message to all registered veterans. Within hours of the message going out we started to receive enquiries about the club, enough for us to commit to rolling out a club of some description
Publicity
The decision had been taken early on during the start-up to produce a website, as it would be an important vehicle for publicity. The early viewing stats supported this assumption even though some of the viewers were logged as being a fair distance from Hook.
The Hook Village Show would present us with another option to get the word out there and the plan was to be there to meet and give out information to potential members and the general public. It promised to be a great opportunity to spread the word about the club. Purchasing began for the necessary advertising and publicity items.
Website Vistor Statistics
Planning For The First Coffee Morning
The decision was reached that getting a coffee morning going would help spread the word. The theory being that veterans would attend the coffee morning and have such a great time that they wouldn't be able to resist telling others. Just need a day and a date of when to start.
Messages were sent out, to those people that had already provided us with their details, asking for a preferred meeting day. On Friday 5 June it was decided that coffee mornings would take place on Friday mornings, to begin with at least, between 09.30 and 11.30. Thanks to the help and generosity of Sandra Tidy and the Trustees of the building/group, the meetings would take place in The Sue Hedges Memorial Hall (7th Bramshill Scout Group Hall). All necessary insurances were in place in anticipation of the regular meetings starting, as well as for the Hook Village Show.
Charity Commission Registration
The lack of people coming forward at this time severely held up the progress with the application to the charity commission. In order to submit a Charity Commission registration request certain conditions must be met; documents need to be submitted, Trustees must be named etc.
Preparation of draft documents etc. continued but we cannot invent Trustees. The rules surrounding Trustee requirements are written in the Charity Commission guide and the clubs intentions are covered by The draft version of theConstitution.
At this point we desperately needed to hear from anyone interested in becoming a Trustee and performing the role either of Treasurer (previous experience required) or Secretary (previous experience preferred). Unfortunately these people were not forthcoming during May.
Things were finally taking big steps forward, including discussions with a T-shirt supplier, which was just as well as we had reached the end of May!
