Manchester Classical Association

Manchester Classical Association is a branch of the national Classical Association, with its own bank account and committee. It is currently dormant due to a lack of volunteers. I was involved in several roles over a period of 14 years.

Treasurer

When I took over as treasurer, the accounts were kept in a paper file. I migrated the accounts to a software system and stored them in Dropbox. This provided the following benefits:

• Access to the accounts for other committee members
• Removal of key person dependency on the treasurer
• Automated generation of annual accounts for the AGM and committee meetings
• Accounts could be backed up to multiple locations

As well as the funds of the branch, I also managed grants for the Manchester Classics for All project, which involved tracking and paying expenses for tutors. The grant was co-mingled with our general funds in the same bank account, so I had to put measures in place in our accounting software to ensure that we could report on the balances of both the branch and the grant.

After serving for four years - the maximum permitted under the branch’s constitution - I handed over to another volunteer. Due to a change in personal circumstances they were unable to continue as treasurer after a few months, and at the branch’s request I returned for an interim period until a new treasurer could be found. The handover process was repeated and the new treasurer continued to use the same system I had setup.

Committee member

After stepping down as treasurer (an ex officio committee member), I stayed on as an ordinary committee member for five years.

Webmaster

Although not an official committee position, I was responsible for building and maintaining the branch’s website for 14 years. It started off with a static site but was moved to WordPress, with the following benefits:

• Removal of key person dependency
• Spread the load of updating content
• Automated population of event pages

I ran a group training session to get other committee members up to speed with using WordPress, as well as offering ad-hoc support to individuals.

I also hosted the site for many years, but eventually moved it to an account which was controlled by the committee.