Our 14th AGM

04.10.22 | Blog

This time last week, the Board of Trustees, staff and representative from the Expert Reference Group, all gathered in our brilliant group space to deliver our 14th Annual General Meeting.

For those that don’t know, an AGM is a meeting held by a charity once a year in which it fulfils a number of constitutional obligations such as, election and retirement of Trustees, election of officers, acceptance of annual accounts, delivery of risk management plans/commitments and a general summary of the year.

The AGM was this year opened by our Chair, Craig, whom talked about the challenges the organisation has faced in 2021-22 but praised the board and the staff team for not only facing those challenges head on, not only for continuing to maintain a large risk appetite and not being too scared to lean into the uncomfortable decision making, but for surpassing everyone’s expectations on what a charity can do and what this charity can do.

As the official Company Secretary, our CEO invited the Chair to commence proceedings in which the following actions were taken:

• Apologies noted for our Treasurer, Fran, who had nominated Evan as her proxy
• Minutes of the last AGM were accepted as accurate
• Trustees Marcia and Sue retired from the board, with both being thanked for the year they served. A special thanks was given to Marcia, who has gone on to pastures new including hosting and producing a brand new Podcast “Black People Don’t Do Therapy” (which is a MUST LISTEN)
• Trustee Sue was then re-elected to the Board and welcomed back
• Duncan then stated that the board would like to propose the previous office holders (Craig as Chair, Evan as Deputy Chair and Fran as Treasurer) be re-elected, which was agreed unanimously
• Duncan then presented a statement from Fran, reminding the board they had already approved the accounts at the previous board meeting and recommended that the board accept them into record, which was agreed unanimously. Fran also sent a message to explicitly thank Peter Smith from Chittenden Horley Limited, who had undertook the organisations first ever full audit, with such care, expertise and commitment that We Are Survivors get’s it right
•  The board, on recommendation from Fran, appointed Chittenden Horley Limited again as its Auditors
• Sue and Andrew, as members of the board that take responsibility for organisational and clinical risk respectively, gave brief comment on the work that has been done on risk management and agreed that the management processes in place would remain
• Craig closed the proceedings, thanking all for attending and for the hard work they have put in to the organisation in 2021-22

The staff and board were then invited to eat, with fantastic food from the brilliant ‘Cracking Good Food‘ who presented a delicious vegetarian meal which went down a treat! Chris and Duncan had recently been on a Carbon Literacy Project training course and lunch was purposefully been vegetarian as an act of carbon reduction… so we did the same and it was utterly delicious (as well as being an act of carbon reduction).

After tea (we say tea here in Manchester as we’re mancunians!) it was on to the presentations by a few members of the team

Staff and board heard about the year in review, the challenges that we have faced; the successes that we have achieved and how investment in the Operations Team has elevated our knowledge of the impact we’re having on male survivors lives; and we also heard about the work of two of our ‘thematic leads’, with NJ focusing on suicide prevention and Nisaa focusing on equality, diversity and inclusion.

Whilst the primary purpose of We Are Survivors is to break the silence on male sexual abuse across Greater Manchester and beyond, we are also a charity who wants to ensure we are practicing ethically; that we compliment the voluntary sector; and that our environmental impact is positive and we create change for the community we exist in and staff we employ.

There was such a buzz about the building throughout and as our CEO, Duncan, summed up perfectly… “if anyone can achieve their vision of ‘no male survivor left behind in Greater Manchester’, then it’s this amazing bunch of people I get to work with and call my friends and colleagues”.

To take a look at our annual accounts, please click here.