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Can you help the Edward Thomas Fellowship?

The Edward Thomas Fellowship is looking for a new Treasurer

Edward Thomas Fellowship – Treasurer Role

 Background

The Edward Thomas Fellowship is an unincorporated and unregistered membership organisation whose objectives are to:

  • Perpetuate the memory of Edward Thomas and foster interest in his life and works
  • Foster a continuing relationship with the family and descendants of Edward Thomas in such a way that contributes to the aims and objectives of the Fellowship
  • Conserve the countryside known to Edward Thomas and recorded in his writings
  • Assist in the preservation of places and things associated with the writer
  • Keep people in touch with relevant happenings and to arrange events which extend the Fellowship

We achieve these objectives through meetings, Walks and Study Days and newsletters (a paper version currently twice a year and electronic versions as and when necessary or appropriate).

We also hold, in partnership with Petersfield Museum, the Edward Thomas Literary Festival. In its third year now, the 2022 Festival will be the last annual one before we move to a bi-annual version being held on alternate years to the Winchester Poetry Festival – to avoid participant clash.

The financial burden of the Festival lies entirely with Petersfield Museum – the Fellowship produces the participants.

The current membership is international and stands at slightly more than 300 households (membership is by household, not by individual, so the actual membership is much higher.

Annual membership for UK members is currently £15, for those in Europe £20 and outwith Europe it is £25.

Committee meetings are held three times a year – July and November digitally by zoom and March in person in Petersfield. The March meeting is always held the Saturday before the Annual Birthday Walk and AGM (held on the Sunday closest to 3 March, Edward Thomas’s birthday).

There is a current proposal, approved by the Membership, to become a Registered Charity. For the sake of continuation the Fellowship would prefer to have a new Treasurer in place as we take this forward. The current Treasurer, Barbara Kinnes, has been in place for over 8 years and feels now is the right time to pass the abacus on to someone new.

Role of the Treasurer

The Treasurer’s main role of course is to keep the finances in order and really ours are pretty simple.

There is a main account into which all the incoming monies are paid and from which all invoices are paid. Any funds for our Legacy and Purchase savings accounts pass through the main account as do any outgoings. This is all quite easy now that we have internet business banking as everything can be done online.

Our main sources of income are:

Members’ subscriptions

Fees for the Poetry competition

Sales of books, note cards etc(all printed at our expense).

Our main expenses are:

Printing of the Newsletter, twice yearly.

Poetry prize money and Judge’s fee ( these are normally more than covered by income from the competition fees.

Insurance and subscriptions to various relevant societies.

Study Days – dependent on their nature but the aim is usually to cover costs

Any expenses associated with the Birthday Walk but these are minimal.

Occasional one off expenses eg our recent printing of William Cooke’s book, ‘Comrades in Letters’ – normally with aim

of recouping costs from sales

Printing of notecards – as above

Purchases for ETSC – normally funded from donations to Purchase fund, can be supplemented according to circumstances.

Main duties of the Treasurer:

Prompt payment of invoices (all now done through BACs)

Monitor bank accounts regularly.

Production of the annual accounts for the AGM in March and to have these independently audited/ approved. Present to members at AGM.

Keep committee members informed of financial position with a report to the committee at the thrice yearly committee meetings.

Please contact the current treasurer, Barbara Kinnes (bjkinnes@gmail.com) or the Chair, Jeremy Mitchell (mitchjd.etf@outlook.com) if you would like any further information, have any questions or would like to take on this role.

 

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2 Comments

  1. Erica Collier Erica Collier

    I am a great niece of Edward Thomas, my mother being the daughter of his youngest brother Julian. My sister, Julia Maxted, is a member of the Edward Thomas Fellowship.

    I have lived and worked in Normandy and Paris most of my life as a teacher, translator, writer and poet and I am, of course perfectly bilingual. I am in the process of joining the
    Fellowship but my message here is to offer you any help you need, if any or ever, with French translations of documents, books or even of poems.

    I would greatly appreciate hearing from you in answer to this offer or with suggestions of other ways I may help in France or with French.

    Many thanks in advance

    • Jeremy Mitchell Jeremy Mitchell

      Hello Erica and thank you for your exciting email, it is lovely to hear from you.
      Thank you also for your offer of help from France and I would like to think that we are on the cusp of an upsurge in interest in ET’s work in France following the publication of 22 of his poems, translated by Sarah Montin – http://www.alidades.fr/thomas.html.
      We also have a native French speaker, Marie-Marthe Gervais, on the Edward Thomas Fellowship committee.
      Please email me directly on mitchjd.etf@outlook.com and we can chat further.
      Many thanks again for making contact and I look forward to hearing from you.
      With kind regards
      Jeremy

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