Interesting stats.

[moomin]

U.K. membership.

Members north of a line from the Bristol Channel to the wash :- 547. Council members 6.

Members south of a line from the Bristol Channel to the wash :- 548. Council members 0.

[Duncan MacIntyre]

Whilst that may well be interesting, the DCS has never had a geographically base for representation. It may well be that these figures look interesting this year, but how many years would the balance be the opposite, and is this really relevant? What is important is that Council members are running the society in a fit and proper manner and that the future of the Dexter breed is being looked after.

Duncan

[Rob R]

How does this compare to the number of Dexters either side of the line?

[Louisa Gidney]

Since the normal whinge used to be that those of us in the north of the country, particularly on Severely Disadvantaged land, were not adequately represented by the preponderance of committee members from the comparatively lush acres in the south of the country, I can only commend this reversal of representation. Hopefully more realistic methods of promoting the breed outside the show ring will also result.
However, regardless of geographical representation, there has been a stunning silence in the aftermath of the AGM. Still awaiting the financial report, no circular email update from the Secretary, what is happening? Clearly there are problems but what is being done to address them? Shouldn't the membership be kept informed?

[Rob R]

However, regardless of geographical representation, there has been a stunning silence in the aftermath of the AGM. Still awaiting the financial report, no circular email update from the Secretary, what is happening? Clearly there are problems but what is being done to address them? Shouldn't the membership be kept informed?

Yes, it would be nice to find out what is going on too, then decisions can be made as to whether subs & fees are worth paying this year or whether it'd be a better option to pee the money away myself this Christmas.

[Jac]

Whilst that may well be interesting, the DCS has never had a geographically base for representation. It may well be that these figures look interesting this year, but how many years would the balance be the opposite, and is this really relevant? What is important is that Council members are running the society in a fit and proper manner and that the future of the Dexter breed is being looked after.

Duncan

Isn’t it about time that there was true geographical representation? I think it is very relevant in the interests of fairness. However, it is true that in the past some areas have been over-represented and the needs of others ignored. Representation seems to follow areas where there is a strong Regional Group those without lose out on both counts. Yes, I agree the Society needs Council members that will run the Society in a fit and proper manner. Where are the Minutes?

[Jac]

Since the normal whinge used to be that those of us in the north of the country, particularly on Severely Disadvantaged land, were not adequately represented by the preponderance of committee members from the comparatively lush acres in the south of the country, I can only commend this reversal of representation. Hopefully more realistic methods of promoting the breed outside the show ring will also result.
However, regardless of geographical representation, there has been a stunning silence in the aftermath of the AGM. Still awaiting the financial report, no circular email update from the Secretary, what is happening? Clearly there are problems but what is being done to address them? Shouldn't the membership be kept informed?

Don't worry Louisa you will soon be getting an update when the need for funding arises.

[ann]

Just to lighten the converation, It would be interesting to know how many of our council members live north of the Watford Gap, many years ago people in the south thought all us northerners lived in hovels with ourside toilets, unfortunately when they discovered how lovely it is up here they all started to sell their houses and retire in the north putting up the prices for the locals.

[Mark S]

I also believe the Society would be better represented by members of Council nominated by their Region members. I am a member of the Charollais Sheep Society and this Society operates extremely well with each area represented by a Regional Chairman. The society operates as follows:

In addition to paid staff e.g. Chief Executive, Breed Secretary, Assistant Secretary, etc. There is a Council of Management, The council is comprised of the National Chairman (elected by the Regional Chairman) an elected Member (Regional Chairman) from each region and the retiring National Chairman who remains on Council for a further year. Elections in each region will take place by postal ballot to appoint a Regional Council Member who will be eligible to serve on the council of Management for a period of 3 years and will be subject to re-election at the end of that period. A retiring member shall not be eligible for re-election if he has served 2 consecutive terms of 3 years on the council immediately prior to the proposed election.

The Regional Chairman represent the following regions, North of Scotland, South of Scotland, North of England, East of England, Central England, Wales, South West England and Northern Ireland.

In addition there are Regional committees which comprise of Regional Chairman, Regional Vice Chairman, Regional Secretary and elected Committee Members

As I Stated earlier, the Society operates well and is well run both at Head office and within the Regions. I was for a time Chairman of Central Region and therefore feel suitably qualified to support and promote this way of working.

Mark S

Brereton Dexters

[Mark S]

RE my proposal

I have been contacted to ask if I have any objections for my proposal to be discussed at the next Council meeting and I am happy for it to be discussed.

It is interesting to read in the latest Bulletin, the Discussion Paper put forward by Mike Fraser re Regional representation, sounds very similar to my proposal ?. It will be interesting to see if changes are made by the society to enable members to have more involvement in Society matters which provides a vehicle for discussion to Council meetings.

Mark S

Brereton Dexters

[monica a waltho]

Seems like a good idea Mark

[Duncan MacIntyre]

Here is the discussion paper from the latest Bulletin. All DCS members should be reading this and trying to make some sense of it - we should be discussing the suggestions, offering alternatives, trying to understand what would be best for DCS. I really do applaud the publication of it in the Bulletin, but that in itself does not result in any discussion nationally. We need to be having some interaction amongst members with free exchange of ideas.


DISCUSSION PAPER – ON REVISED ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE DEXTER CATTLE SOCIETY
Background

The current organisational structure of the Dexter Society has evolved over many years into a Group of nine elected Trustees (referred to as “The Council”) who are volunteers supported by an office administration (employed) composing of a full time breed secretary and a part time office assistant. In addition there are regional member groups (currently 14 of these as per the latest Dexter Bulletin), although at this point there is no direct organisational structure connection between these regional groups and the Council/Trustees. In addition to the above there are a series of ad-hoc committees established by the Trustees to address various activities, some of which are operational issues such as judges appointments, and some are project activities such as archiving.

At present the following is relevant –

- There is a disjoint between the membership and the trustees. Evidence of this includes less than 10% of the membership voting in the trustees election, detailed issues of concern some important and some not so, being raised directly with trustees individually and collectively, the use of social media by some members to vent issues that concern them, etc

- The trustees are at present trying to fulfil two different roles. Firstly that of "trustees" and secondly that an “operational role”. The Trustee role has evolved from “the Council” in its previous format, but is now has significant external reporting and control issues associated with being Trustees of a Registered Charity. The idea of the Council representing only the members of their region/group is no longer the legal reality, the Trustees have a responsibility for the behaviour of the Charity as a body/whole, and are no longer strictly speaking “the voice of the members”. They are personally responsible for the strategic direction of the society and its financial well being in line with its goals and objectives. However because of the route taken to arrive at this point, the Trustees of the Dexter Society are still involved in operational issues, monitoring and in some sort cases actually running a series of operational activities that are deemed necessary for the society. Many of these latter activities are not just “operational” they are "projects" that have become institutionalised within the fabric of the organisation
- This involvement in two distinct branches of work has led to problems both real and perceived with regard to the relationship between the trustees and the membership e.g. there is a conflict between the legal responsibility of being a trustee of a registered charity and the openness that is required in some issues to ensure members understand why decisions are made.

In any consideration of the structure of the Dexter Society the above points need to be included and there is an urgent need for more than 10% of the society members to be engaged in the running of the society. At the recent AGM it was clear that many present wanted more involvement and accountability with regard to decisions being made.
While a truly involved engagement of all members is desirable, this is unrealistic, many members in reality desire only minimum level interaction with the society and require nothing more than an efficient Herdbook/cattle registration operation, at as low a cost as possible. This is unlikely to change in the short to medium term.

Proposal

There seems little point in setting out an agenda that promotes an ambitious democratic one member one vote approach. There is clearly no appetite for this among the membership given current voting patterns, and apart from a vocal few on social media and at the AGM, there is no significant volume of members agitating for change/improved accountability, even though it is needed

However in many parts of the country there are active local/regional Dexter Society groups. If as per the guidelines of the Society each group composes of 15 members or more (to be recognised as a group) this opens up the opportunity to utilise representatives of these local groups into the national structure and increase directly the participation of members in the wider organisation. If as a rough estimate each of the 14 regional groups listed in the last bulletin has an average of 20 active members, then having a representative of each regional group at national level, would lead to more than 50% of the membership having local access to a more direct voice in the way the organisation is run.


How would it work?

If the two strands of activity are split, with strategic activity for the society meeting its agreed goals and objectives being the responsibility of the Trustees/Council, then operational activities can be given over to a Group Committee/Council comprising of a representative of each regional group. It would be still the responsibility of the Trustees as Directors of the Charity to report on the activities of the organisation to the Charities Commission and to do this they need to have some monitoring and reporting mechanisms in place re the activities of the Committee, one possibility is that the Chair of the Group Committee is a trustee, but day to day operational decisions would be dealt with at the Group Committee level.

Examples of things the Committee could be responsible for –
- Monitoring of operational budgets and expenditure, particularly with regard to the areas for which they are leading/responsible
- Identification of project proposals and budgets
- Judges Appointment/Showing Committee
- Youth Development Committee
- Existing committees re Beef, Archiving, Judges Appointments, Linear Assessment would operate as sub- committees/panels from the Group committee structure.

The above is by no means an exhaustive list and it would be up to the committee to make the case as to their range of responsibilities. In some cases there might be a two tier arrangement -

Example - Disciplinary Issues

The Committee could form a disciplinary panel which deals with issues regarding misbehaviour/breaking society rules etc by members. As a result members with disciplinary issues are judged by a group of their peers, and the current "them and us" scenario which has led to confrontation, is replaced with a softer peer review approach, with the Trustees involvement in the operation of disciplinary issues being restricted to "review" and "appeal" if desired by the member regarding a decision made by the panel at Committee level. This should hopefully allow disciplinary issues to be dealt with in-house rather than the society airing such issues in public.


At the strategic level the Trustees would still be active and in fact legally as a charity must be in place. But their emphasis would be to set the strategic direction of the society, ensuring that all activities are in line with the goals and the enhancement of the Dexter breed. There would be a monitoring role on the activities of the committee, but unless the committee are clearly operating outside the parameters of the society's goals and objectives the Trustees would not interfere. Example activities of the Trustees would include

• Governance issues
• Budget setting
• Audit of financial and operational activities-
• Breed standards


Again this is not a complete list and the demarcation between the strategic level Trustees activity and that of the Committee would be a worked out/agreed agenda.


Membership/Structure of Committee

One representative from each regional group would be on the committee, with the default representative being the Chairperson of the Group. (If unable to attend the Sec of the group, and/or if necessary if the instance of either of the other two not being able to attend, the Treasurer of the Local Group – only one representative per group) Allowing only elected office holders of the group to attend helps ensure that the views of a wider number of group members is reflected on the committee rather than that of an individual.

Any decision of the Group Committee to be actioned/approved needs a 2/3 plus majority of those representatives attending the committee. i.e. 10 out of the present 14 groups/ representatives if all present –

The Group Committee would meet once per quarter, with it's various operational sub-committee/panels meeting as deemed necessary by the committee

The chairperson role of the Committee will be a non-voting trustee representative (in a chair the meeting role)

Membership/Structure of Trustees/Council

If the proposal is accepted there is no immediate need to change the size of the Trustees group, and in fact it does reduce risk on the way forward by allowing the existing number of trustees posts to remain for at least the first year of the committee operation and run the Group Committee in shadow form along side the newly elected Council. This provides cover if some of the operational activities are not picked up by the committee or if its birth and first steps take longer than anticipated. After successful implementation of the Group committee it should be possible to perhaps reduce the number of Trustees to say 6 or 7 over a three year cycle by reducing the number of vacancies as members retire in rota. Again with this revised structure the Trustees should only have to meet once per quarter.


Cost of this proposal

The travel costs expenses of the Committee should be met using the same rules currently applied to a Trustees expenses. Obviously with a possible 15 Committee Members x 4 times per annum (60) meeting along with 9 Trustees x 4 times per annum (36) (total 96), this will require an increase of budget from the existing Trustee level, 9 persons x 6 times per annum (54). Rough estimate of the extra cost would be £4K. This could be more than covered by for example the improved Treasury management of the society's reserve funds and is felt to be a small price to pay for the increased democracy and accountability to members.

Conclusion

The proposal replaces the Societies current very flat structure with a more hierarchical model involving regional groups representatives as members of an operational committee. It could have the directly linked impact of –
• improving the democratic structure of the society at a cost which is manageable within resources that should be available
• giving many more members a more direct voice and involvement at national level, potentially 50% + of the members a route to increased participation
• Removes the present problem of strategic and operational activities being driven by the same group (Trustees)
• Allows much better accountability and transparency in the operation of the society

[Jac]

I think what is going to be needed is a presentation to the Groups to explain how this idea will actually work in practice. However, what will happen to those that don't belong to a Group or don't have a Group in the area will need to be resolved. For those who have very limited budgets it is going to be hard to persuade them to pay more money out to join a Group to participate fully. I am supporting this concept but not sure how the funding is going to work out.

[Mark S]

I agree with all Jac's comments.

Re Mike Frasers proposal, surely having 15 Regional committee members plus 9 trustees is too many and could be difficult to manage at meetings, especially if the Regional committee members are limited to what they may be able to discuss and make decisions on. Is less more ?

I still favour and recommend strongly the Charollais society model and I am not saying it should be implemented as they operate, but use it as a starting point for discussion. The Dexter Society may wish to split the country into a greater number of Regions to suit the geography of the membership, some smaller, some larger. But the main thing is for the members to have a voice. If this does happen it is then up to the membership to make full use of the new structure.

Mark S

Brereton Dexters

[Jac]

It is much easier to set an organisation up from scratch than it is to change established structures. The way that Regional Groups have worked is that they have relied on the goodwill of individuals to set them up and provide a service to their members with (in reality) very little involvement from the DCS. Is there a proposal to change/enlarge the purpose/functionality of those groups or set up a separate (but more limited) number of Areas – England, Wales, Scotland, NI, ROI, Overseas? Area elections to end the trend toward over representation of one geographical Area on Council. I think trying for reform is difficult when it may affect existing Council members who have to put forward the proposals in the first place.