Plans for the next two years were the result of the trustee’s latest strategy day. We decided the charity’s priorities for 2011-12 were:

• increasing the number of volunteers
• boosting funds raised from donors
• strengthening how we administer the organisation.

Katie, James, Jenny and Liz met in September. As last year, Liz kindly hosted at her home in Yorkshire.

The result of the prioritisation exercise. See the link PDF for a clean electronic version.

We had drawn a graph on flip chart paper, with axes for importance and urgency. On this we placed post-its to show when we thought tasks need to be done. You can see the result of this exercise [PDF]. We would like to hear your feedback on these plans.

The immediate priorities were of course:

• publishing the autumn newsletter, and organising the next annual meeting
• but also establishing methods for (online) donations and transaction management
• plus more audio visual web content.

Jenny, Katie and Liz discussing issues

We decided to take a new approach to membership (more on that soon). This means it is vital we make a big push to get more people involved with running the organisation and raising money to support its activities.

If we achieve those things we will be able to be more proactive, for example:

• providing resources to patients and parents
• reaching out to doctors and other relevant professionals
• campaigning on important issues.

So how can you help? We need you to:

• step forward and take on one of the roles below
• or help compete one of the tasks listed on our volunteering page
• or get out there and raise money for us.

The roles we need to fill are:

• Chair
• Treasurer
• Secretary
• Fundraising
• Newsletter / blog editor
• Facebook/Twitter community manager
• Webmaster
• Support / buddy scheme co-ordinator / contact for parents with a newly diagnosed baby.

Please contact us if you can help in any way at all.