Manchester Friends of the Earth

Manchester Friends of the Earth is one of the largest local groups in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Joint Co-ordinator

As joint co-ordinator, I helped run the group in conjunction with two other volunteers. Co-ordinators were responsible for:

• Ensuring that the local group followed the terms of our licence agreement with the national body
• Clearing the content of press releases made in the name of the group
• Ensuring that we had the appropriate insurance in place for events

I also chaired and took minutes at the monthly planning meeting, where issues such as budgets were discussed. I managed and chaired the meetings that included all the Greater Manchester (and Warrington) local group coordinators.

I was interviewed on TV and radio on numerous occasions, as well as providing quotes for the Manchester Evening News and other publications.

Treasurer

When I took over as treasurer, the accounts were kept in a single Excel file which only one person had access to. I migrated the accounts to an online cloud-based solution, which had the following benefits:

• Automatic importing of bank statements
• Automatic allocation of regular transactions to the correct account code
• Access to the accounts for multiple volunteers
• Removal of key person dependency on the treasurer

I also wrote software to convert the bank and PayPal statements from CSV to QIF so that they could be imported automatically.

After serving as treasurer for three years, I successfully handed over to a new volunteer.