Our calendar of events around the country is so important not just as valuable income streams, which they are, but also as a reminder too about EEIBA’s charitable activities.

The autumn and winter season of fundraising dinner dances and other events is now well under way. The season started with our long established Yorkshire Ridings Branch holding their “bit of a do”, in reality a prestigious black tie dinner dance, at the Majestic Hotel, Harrogate. Our Gloucester Branch’s Ball was well received at the Tortworth Court Four Pillars hotel on 13 November, with the Northern Ireland Branch Electric Ball coming up on 27 November. The Midlands Branch Christmas Party and our friends at the 12 Electric Club in Kent will be raising funds for EEIBA during December.

Our friends and volunteers in Scotland go in for the most spectacular Christmas Lunches with (hopefully) more than 1,000 guests at the two events in Glasgow and Edinburgh and a new lunch in Aberdeen as well. Sussex Branch is not to be outdone with no less than three Christmas Lunches in Brighton, Eastbourne and Crawley. And, Yorkshire Ridings Branch Christmas Lunch is also a firm favourite in the calendar (see the calendar of events on the website for details).

It is just amazing how our heritage of these events is supported so well, thanks to the volunteers in the Branches who put their body and soul into making it all happen.

powerBall, in the Great Room at London’s Grosvenor House, also went very well, with the industry getting behind the charity, giving their support and using this, and all our other events, as a way of entertaining their customers, clients and associates. Numbers were 200 or so down on the 2008 event with fewer premium tables and less in income from sponsorship, reflecting the difficult times during which we are living. However, net proceeds at some £225,000 were a fantastic result.

I am well aware that not everyone can attend black tie dinners, golf days, fishing competitions and all the other ways in which we try to raise money from events. This is why we are so keen to promote and develop our individual giving programmes, such as Power Lottery, company specific power draws, becoming a Senator and remembering EEIBA in your Will as a means of involving and giving everyone an opportunity to give and to know more.

“The cost of keeping grandchildren in the family can be life below the poverty line” is the headline to an article in The Times (26 October 2009) which goes on to say that “... more than a third of grandparents who look after their grandchildren full time to prevent them being taken into care live below the poverty line”. We are told that some 200,000 grandparents are looking after their grandchildren so keeping them out of (costly) foster and residential care.

The research by the Grandparents Plus charity behind the articles resonates with me. I have been thinking about how people live with poverty and impact which charities like EEIBA can have on individuals and households and how we can describe what we do in a way which engages with our supporters and donors, to enthuse and encourage them. I am also mindful that we have several welfare cases where we are supporting grandparents to look after their grandchildren.

Poverty can be said to be about not having the basic necessities of modern life. To be sure, these “basic necessities” in Great Britain bear little resemblance to other places in the world. And while we can argue about what is meant exactly by “basic necessities”, the impact of poverty in this country, and worldwide, is considerable.

Individuals and households who cannot engage fully in modern society makes us all the poorer, economically and socially. The reasons why people face poverty can be many and various (the impact of redundancy, the health of a key family member and other social issues, such as divorce). Also, some in our community face a lifetime of low incomes due to social, education, mobility, health and employment issues and prospects.

Education and welfare systems seem to provide little by way of training and support, as a life learning skill, to help us deal with crises and difficult circumstances as well as fairly basis budgeting skills.

So, as a result, some manage with living on the breadline much better than others; some just don’t cope very well and need our support and training to do so.

Anyone in the social work field will tell you that living on low income grinds away at the social fabric of families and households. Perhaps too, the prospect of little by way of change and improvement in personal and health circumstances presents an even greater significant contributory factor to feelings of well-being and optimism. The reality of coping with poverty day to day and in the future can depress even the most positive of souls. Poverty is really a huge energy block.

So the effect and impact on individuals and families when, however this achieved, someone from EEIBA (or an organisation like us) reaches out to help must, for many, be a cathartic moment. Just listening is a huge boon. Offering practical solutions and helping to think about potential ways forward makes such a difference to how people feel about themselves.

The prospect and reality of sourcing benefits and allowances, support from other organisations and our own cash grants programme must literally be seen as a godsend to so many. I think about the pensioner couple whom we helped by claiming Pension Credits and other allowances, of which they were completely unaware. By means of our knowledge and skill, EEIBA was able to almost double this couple’s weekly income, without giving them a penny of charity grant.

The impact on them was huge and lifted them out of poverty, giving them the prospect of a more positive future. Families facing the key income earner being made redundant must induce huge worries about how to manage day to day living and how to give the family the opportunities which loving and caring parents would wish their children to be able to grasp. Offering help, being there to help, is a sure way of demolishing some, if not all, of these brick walls which so many face.

It is all about the strong helping the less strong so that all of us can live full and enriching lives. As someone said to me recently, “thank goodness our industry has a charity like EEIBA”. I agree. Our commitment, by the volunteers and Branch network of supporters working in conjunction with the charity’s Trustees and staff, does so much to contribute towards the well-being of so many in our society who face such hard and difficult times.

What we have to do is to make sure EEIBA is known and understood as a key driver towards finding solutions and relieving need.

On Friday 2 October, ECA London Region’s Grand Dinner and Ball was held at the London Lancaster Hotel. Thanks to ECA Regional Manager, Malcolm Conby and the efforts of ECA friends, this longstanding social event raised much needed funds for EEIBA. I am not sure how much we will be receiving but I know Malcolm will be in touch shortly with some good news.

The following Monday saw President, Ian Humphreys, at EEIBA’s Scottish Forum of Branches in Edinburgh. Ian had been to the SELECT Annual Awards in Glasgow and then went to the long established Yorkshire Ridings Branch annual PowerBall in Harrogate.

He joined me and colleagues Pat Sheldrake, Claire Paton and Tracey Mackay with EEIBA Branch supporters in Scotland. We talked about our new governance structures following Council’s decision to re-organise its sub-committees which arose from some really helpful feedback we received from an earlier Branch Forum about our decision making processes.

We went through the new staff structure in relation to the welfare caseworkers and then studied a detailed finance report while looking at some of our fund-raising tools. One of the agenda items was about Scottish identity. The general consensus of the meeting was EEIBA’s awareness is poor throughout Scotland and it was felt that a lack of feedback from functions to participating companies does not help our cause. Some of the suggestions put forward including use of posters to be made available at trade counters and staff canteens, using some of the trade magazines, particularly CABLEtalk and emailing news and information to supporters.

It was also pointed out how helpful it would be to have more Scottish beneficiaries included in the case histories part of our website. I was also really pleased that a couple of the Branch supporters are happy for their name to be put forward for our new contract visitors to undertake some welfare visits in Scotland and I will follow that up in the next few weeks to make sure they are involved.

The next day I had a chance to call into the Falkirk office and to introduce myself less formally to Tracey Mackay and to pick up on several projects and issues with Claire Paton. And then onto the Electrical Distributors’ Association’s annual Scottish Function.

The EDA Scottish Function is an unusual, albeit regular, event in the industry calendar. More than fifty years ago, when the industrial manufacturing base was centred around the Midlands, Scottish wholesalers devised a very simple formula to invite manufacturing colleagues to Scotland for informal discussions and contact.

Until then, with communications as they were, they had few opportunities to meet manufacturing colleagues in the supply chain. Even though communications have improved immeasurably, it is still a very popular event for people in electrical manufacturing and wholesaling to meet up informally over a period of a few days to catch up, update, have a whinge and moan, resolve issues, make new friends and just to spend some time out of the usual hurly burly of commercial life, getting to know each other.

I have been invited to this event for more than ten years now and every time I have been, it has proved its worth in time, trouble and effort to attend. This year, with sponsorship for the forthcoming powerBall my main priority, I had a golden opportunity to undertake some discreet “begging” at some of the sessions. I brought home with me more than £2,000 in cash from fund-raising during the Function, together with a valuable voucher for a holiday package at Gleneagles Hotel which we will use at powerBall. I was able to tie up some sponsorship deals for powerBall and recruit three potential runners in the London Marathon. I need to also follow through with contacting some new faces in the industry to leverage more support for the charity.

Happily I was also joined for part of the Scottish Function by Ian Humphreys. It was helpful for him to meet and greet so many people, especially as we will meet up with many of them at powerBall in the next few weeks.

It seems our industry colleagues will support their charity even though they are facing very tough economic conditions. They share our view about keeping as much as we can in the calendar. They were very pleased to learn there will be more than 1,100 people sitting down to powerBall this year and that our Branch events continue to provide welcome income streams and regional focus.

On 1 October thirty years ago, I joined BEN (the car industry benevolent fund) as their first housing officer, from the Housing Corporation and local government service. BEN at that time had two residential centres with volunteer centres (branches) and a large fundraising event at Grosvenor House, called Motor Ball. In 1979, the motor industry was still dominated by British manufacturers to the extent that I was obliged to choose a British made company car (a dark green Triumph Dolomite)!

Over the intervening years, I had different roles in public relations and events and fundraising at BEN, then I was Director of Fundraising at Parkinson’s Disease Society, before arriving at EEIBA in December 1994 as the eighth Chief Executive since we were founded in 1905.

Although I am not too taken up by anniversaries like this, a recent opportunity to meet up with my predecessor, Derek Bignold, has left me in reflective mood. It was interesting talking to Derek about EEIBA and to reflect on all the changes which the charity has lived through since Derek was at the helm.

In his time, the electrical supply industry was in public hands, the electrical wholesaling industry comprised a number of well known brand names and many of the electrical manufacturing processes were carried out within UK shores. We had over 30 Branches at one time.

Since then the electricity supply industry was privatised, electrical wholesalers have been subject to substantial re-organisation and so much electrical manufacturing takes place abroad. Big names in the industry, like GEC, have disappeared. So although the supporter base is made up of the same industry sectors as before, the names and how each relates with the other has changed out of Derek’s recognition. We have 15 Branches now and an active supporter base whose numbers have diminished as a result of so many corporate changes.

Thinking about the people whom we help, which is where I came into the charity world originally and over which I have ultimate responsibility, EEIBA continues to try and fulfil the basic needs of individuals and households. But how we go about doing this has also changed more than once. It is more evolution than revolution.

When we were undertaking some background thinking, towards a strategic plan this time last year, we noted that whereas we used to receive letters and referrals of application, more now use website access and emails than ever before. Our strong links with companies and associations through telephone Help Lines is an important recent development.

There is now so much more we can do in support of people in need by signposting and what we call “almonisation”, a term devised to describe the activities of providing alms to people in need with the help of other charities and support organisations. Almonisation is nothing new in that we have been working with others since our very earliest days but how we go about these processes is more sophisticated.

And the structure and reporting mechanisms for all charities, with additional registration and accounting requirements, means that I spend more of my time on governance than before. This is not a wholly onerous task as charities like EEIBA try to be transparent and open about what we do so that supporters, beneficiaries and potential donors can access information and be more aware about our activities.

It is just that sometimes, with all the work which is needed to ensure best practice, the organisation should not and does not lose sight of what it is here to do. Which is why I try to keep a grip on welfare issues, sometimes undertaking welfare visits and casework myself, so that my feet are very firmly planted on the welfare ground. Contact with Branch supporters and industry friends is also invaluable in knowing what is going on, for which I am grateful.

In looking to the future, weathering the current economic storm and thinking about new directions to relieve need and distress, my passion and interest in all the work of EEIBA, and the benevolent fund sector of the charity world through the ACO and other networks, continues to be enthused.

It seems to me that EEIBA is as relevant to the electrical and electronics industries as it was in the early part of the 20th century when our founders set up our organisation, whose guiding principles remain as valid.

My job is now more about ensuring that EEIBA’s structures, operational platforms, funding and cost bases are in place so that we can react and anticipate the needs, wants and wishes of our existing beneficiary group and those who may need to turn to us in the future.

With so much to do and to think about, time really does fly when you are enjoying what you do.

I’d be interested in any comments and feedback about where we are going as a charity and what you think about EEIBA.

Welcome to this blog. I hope that, as the weeks and months go by, you will find content here that is both helpful and informative.