If you enjoy being a member of the Focus Group – share our passion for landscape and seascape photography and our vision to foster a supportive community of like-minded enthusiasts – please consider volunteering to help the Group in 2021.
Focus is run by volunteers. They bring a variety of skills, including legal, finance, project management, IT and marketing. (Some are even accomplished photographers, but that’s certainly not a requirement !)
We do need to refresh our skills set in 2021 and we’re calling out for new volunteers. Could you spare some of your time and enthusiasm to help Focus deliver on a number of projects ?
Focus is a not-for-profit body and everything we do is designed to add value for our members by providing them with opportunities to shoot together and learn from each other on a regular basis.
Over recent years our workload has increased. We manage a resource-packed website and oversee a large and active community on Facebook. We also have a growing subscriber base of Focus Plus Members. We maintain an approved panel of professional Educators and Trip Providers. We often organise our own educational events and workshops. We maintain relationships with generous Sponsors, who offer discounts to Focus members as well as donate prizes to our various photography competitions.
Our Sponsors have supported the Focus Awards competition – one of the most popular and most valuable amateur landscape photography competitions in Australia. It culminates in a dinner and prize-giving ceremony, which is a significant project in its own right. We chose to cancel the 2020 competition because of covid-19, but plan to re-instate it in 2021.
All of which requires contributions from our Committee volunteers.
Did we just mention the word ‘Committee’ ? Don’t worry, it’s not as formal as it sounds.
We do meet on a monthly basis, sometimes in person (usually in North Sydney over breakfast on a Saturday morning), but lately also via Zoom. So, these days physical distance from Sydney isn’t an obstacle to working with us.
We assign tasks to each individual member of the Committee according to their skills and interests, and they in turn might work with other Focus volunteers to manage their projects. We use the Committee meetings for project leaders to report on their progress each month.
The Focus Committee can comprise up to 11 members, including the Chairperson, Treasurer and Secretary who have some formal responsibilities under the not-for-profit constitution.
Committee Members are proposed, seconded and elected to serve for a one-year term at the Annual General Meeting held each February.
After three years service our current Treasurer has decided to step down, so Focus does need a new Treasurer with financial and/or accounting experience to prepare monthly management accounts and formal financial statements for year-end submission.
If you enjoy being a member of this Group and would like to see it prosper, and can offer us some support in whatever role or capacity you feel most comfortable with, we would be delighted to hear from you.
Please also feel free to ask questions. You can contact Chairperson Jo Andrews at [email protected] to swap phone numbers and then have a chat.
Thank you for your support. It means a lot.
The Focus Committee