Minutes of WaCoCo Networking Meeting – Wed 7th December 2016
Attendees:
R Bridge – Chaplin Close Residents’ Association, WaCoCo Chair
D Clarson – St John’s Church, Waterloo
E Elkington – WaCoCo administrator
Rev G Goddard – St John’s Church, Waterloo
K Hamilton – Waterloo Community Development Group
R Leech – Oasis UK
M Thompson – Waterloo community Theatre
Apologies:
Paul Ely – Bankside Open Spaces Trust
- Conflicts of interest: No conflicts of interest were reported.
2.Minutes of2nd November networking meeting: Minutes of the Networking Meeting held on Wed 2nd November2016 were agreed and signed off. No matters arising were raised.
3. Financial Report
The Chair referred to the pre-circulated finance statement for WaCoCo at 30 November2016, reporting that the group’s finances werein a healthy statewith over £7,000 in the bank account. Even allowing for yet-to-be-made budgeted disbursements for community chest award payments and contributions towards the cost of the South Bank Forums, there were still sufficient funds (£3,863) to comfortably cover core running costs to last for at least another six months, given that the only main expected costs were administration fees at around £200 or less per month and the audit at £350. As well as the possibility of further LFN funding, there was also the guarantee of further income from the next London Eye visitor management group’s community chest round in the form of its administration free and the chance of some funding from the London Community Foundation.
4. Update on monitoring of London Eye community chest grants
It was noted that all nine final project reports had been received, the final assessor’s report drafted, all submitted invoices for the final tranche of grant monies received and only one of these invoices still awaited. One award winner, the Garden Museum, had found that its project had come inunder budget by £1,393 and so reduced its invoice and left a larger than expected balance with WaCoCo. This offset the increased payment of £500 made to the assessor, Natalie Bell, to cover the cost of her extra reporting work and review of the reporting process (to streamline it for future rounds). The balance, £893, would be carried over into the next funding round. The Chair reported that his meeting with Alex Valenzuela of SBEG and a key member of the funding team in November had gone well.
5. Update on VIDI Media project, including discussion of draft disbursement plan
The pre-circulated Addington Street profit and loss account forecast was discussed, with the Chair explaining that the final projected income for WaCoCo was now estimated to be about £50,000 for the first year. This was expected to rise over the five years of the project, with a total five-year income of up to £400,000 possible.
KH asked if WaCoCo would be liable to pay tax on the monies it would receive. The Chair confirmed that it would not as they would come as a donation. DC asked when the first payment would be received. The Chair said that he hoped the screens, with income-yielding advertisements, would be in place by March 2017 and payments should follow within about six months after that. LCR have concluded heads of terms with VIDI. He added that the owner of VIDI Media was now engaging with media buyers. Negotiations with would-be advertisers were underway, understandably slowed down to some extent by the advertisers’ demandsfor detailed statistics on volumes and demographics of passers-by(in order to demonstrate the impact of advertising on the screen and so link cost to impact).
DC noted that publicity of this scheme, and its potential revenue stream, might attract new Trustees to WaCoCo’s board. While welcoming this potential input, the Chair cautioned that he did not want to publicise the project widely for the time-being, thus raising would-be awards recipients’ hopes, until all agreements had been signedand there was no chance of a last minute collapse of the deal.
Discussion turned to DC and RL’s paper looking at, among other things, the likely management requirements for the new fund.
There was discussion about the merits of outsourcing the management of the fund to a proven, well-regarded team with experience of such work. One suggestion was the Walcot Foundation. Another was the London Community Foundation. There was support for the suggestion that Natalie Bell, via Unleashing Talent, might be an appropriate paid overseer of the fund. There was a need to realistically consider the financial cost of such outsourcing and balance it against the time it would save a small, busy team of unpaid WaCoCo Board members.
DC asked when a name would be chosen and logo created for this fund. The Chair suggested that the fund name might be‘Waterloo PACT ‘, with PACT standing for ‘Putting Advertising and Communities Together’. This suggestion was well-received.
RL cautioned that there was a need to create promotional material for the community advertising slots in the ad loop sequence which would not require frequent, time-requiring, updating: it needed to be general non-time specific.
It was agreed that DC and RL would draft a basic business plan, to be presented at the March2017 networking meeting, for the additional admin requirements and potential staff needed to manage this new income stream when it comes online.
6.Discussion of quote from Strudel for upgrade of WaCoCo website
The Chair referred to the pre-circulated quote from Strudel for upgrade works on the WaCoCo website. He had received it following his recent meeting with its representative, BesmaWaheb. Two key things it covered were prominent promotion of the London Eye community chest and a refresh of the home page. The Chair explained how, at the moment, once a visitor selected an the event or news item s/he wanted to look up from our Tuesday email then getting to the story via the link provided in the email was easy. Now he wanted the home page to beeasier to use for those coming direct to the website and not via the Tuesday email. The proposal is to keep the navigation bar at top and remove the looping banner pictures but instead create four new large buttons that would focus on the same info as the Tuesday email (News, Events, Funding with the addition of one to encourage people to sign up to the Tuesday email). Generally the upgrade would modernise the site’s slightly tired look with a home page.
It was noted that the glitch which had made two out-dated funding opportunities stick at the top of the funding opportunity list had been resolved.
It was agreed to not commission Strudel to design a London Eye community chest grants logo. As well as costing £200, it was felt that it was not necessary.
It was noted that WaCoCo would have to pay a monthly fee for having its page hosted by Strudel in future. It had been very fortunate to avoid this cost for the first ten years of the site’s existence, and the Chair reassured those present that the £160 per year of this would include the cost of Strudel fixing problems, such as the newsletter failing to send out, which happened on occasion and for which Strudel was currently billing WaCoCo to resolve.
With regards the proposed new page for the LE grants RL cautioned against having too many clicks between the home page and an application form for WaCoCo-managed-funding as, in her experience, it might be off-putting to would-be applicants. It was agreed to wait to proceed on the creation of a specific grant page for the London Eye Grants until further discussions with SBEG and the VMG who also intended to upgrade their website re. the LE grants so that we could coordinate and not duplicate things. It was agreed also that some fine-tuning of the proposed layout of this part of the new-look webpage could be carried out in 2017 before deciding to proceed.
7.Any Other Business
There was no other business.
8. Date of next meeting: Wed 1st February2017, 8.30 a.m. start, New Cut Housing Association meeting room, 106 The Cut.