(a charitable company limited by guarantee)
Registered Charity No. 1054914
Company Number 3182826
We were once again partners in the Charity Investment Conference – an event that is run jointly with Barings, Rensburg Sheppards and Sarasin Chiswell. This was our most successful and well-attended Investment event ever. With over 200 delegates enjoying the half day, listening to investment experts and case-studies from fellow FDs.
In October we put on an entirely new event – the Accounting Software Forum. This was a significant departure for CFDG in that it focused on one fairly specific subject and a small subset of our membership – organisations with a turnover of less than two million pounds. Despite the specialist nature of the programme it turned out to be a very popular day. Charity speakers talked through their actual experience and day-to-day use of the most common packages. Suppliers shared their view of their packages’s benefits and development plans. The focus of the day was on discussion, practice and effectiveness. The theme of the day grew out of the discussions at our Entry-level Software Special Interest Group (ELSSIG) which is mentioned above.
This year’s IT Conference (entitled ‘New Horizons’) welcomed nearly 150 people to the Royal College of Surgeons in March 2007. It focused on new trends in technology, combining two strands of thinking – one looking at trends and technological trajectories, the other one looking at strategic IT issues. It also raised generic strategic questions any charity should look at with regard to their technical infrastructure and management information systems.
On the strategic side we looked at supplier relationships and who really is in charge in the organisation for IT and infrastructure decisions? Delegate feedback clearly showed that there was a high level of satisfaction with the day as a whole but also that the high point of the conference was the opening plenary on ‘Making information and knowledge management deliver benefit to your organization’ by Ajay Burlingham-Böhr, of Anglia Ruskin University.
As ever in November we held our Annual Risk Conference, entitled ‘Risk or Opportunity’. This attracted an audience of 170 (its highest ever), a 13% improvement on the previous year. The sessions looked at such diverse issues as reputation, disaster recovery, insurance, volunteering, data protection, relocation and fraud.
We held 25 members’ meetings during the year compared with 22 last year. This is because we increased meetings in the regions from four each to five. We also extended the locations of our regional events by adding Liverpool and Exeter as regular venues in the Northern and the Southwest and Wales regions respectively.
We held 9 training courses during the year, which was down on the 13 we put on in the previous year. Attendance at training events fell off in the first half of the year, we then heavily marketed our training programme and benefited from a significant increase in numbers in the last part of the year which has continued through into 2007/8.
Page 6 - Annual Report and Financial Statements 2007