Signed-up IHBC members will have received the current issue of the newly named ‘IHBC Membership Matters’ – previously our Member Eletter – offering updates on recent IHBC trustee meetings while providing more context on our NewsBlog service updates.
The IHBC writes:
Pivoting in a pandemic – Building conservation advocacy with new APPG, VP, Schools and more
This newly named ‘IHBC Membership Matters’ offers updates to members on recent meetings of – and reports to – IHBC trustees, as well as providing a little more context to our NewsBlog service updates.
This issue covers the three trustee meetings over the period from February 2020 – when ‘pandemics’ and COVID-19 were still far from our radar – to June. Now our Brighton School is postponed until 2021; we’ve pivoted to an alternative format and platform for a 2020 Virtual School; and trustees are addressing genuine concerns across members and the wider sector over the IHBC’s capacity to maintain our current legacy of accessible support to the full diversity of our membership and their networks.
Yet not all has been about threats and pivots. While our AGM has had to be postponed – a precautionary stay, to December 3 – the planned resolutions will remain: on our Corporate Plan for 2020-25, (‘CP25’), updated as far as reasonable, and our new constitution, starting with ‘Articles of Association’, in line with the ‘Proposal for future Governance…’ as approved at our 2019 AGM.
Similarly our ongoing efforts to establish a new All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for advocacy in the political terrain is securing a solid list of founding members, even if the formal establishment has been delayed due to the need for an in-person meeting in Westminster.
We have also made a more substantial – and for many, long overdue – pivot towards digital support, even encompassing the planned priority CPD ‘Local Delivery Pilots’ to be offered to our Branches. And though we have dispensed with the 2020 School issue of Context, to manage outgoings, our publications are continuing as normal otherwise: two issues of Context have been issued since the last Membership Matters, one is in hand, and our Yearbook is imminent, with introductions from our future APPG Chair as well as Griff Rhys Jones, no less!
So, while bleakness maybe pervasive just now, it is not inevitable. The reality too is that some changes arising from the pandemic have positive impacts for conservation: our international networks have received an invaluable shot in the arm with the Virtual School, while we welcomed both a new IHBC Vice President and a Memorandum of Understanding. In many ways, if our immediate plans have been hampered, our trajectory is at once more substantial and sustainable than ever before….
