That meeting

There were six of us at the meeting - three from Brighton Lions and three from Hove Rotary. It was certainly interesting to hear about their classic motorcycle run. They have organised it for fourteen years but now feel they are getting too old, especially the one whose brainchild it was and who has undertaken the bulk of the organisation each of those 14 years. It has built up over the years and there are now regularly some 300 or so participants. Well, that's what they told us. I came away with several year's programmes which list all the pre-registered participants and in none of the more recent years were there more than 250. Last year there were just 202.

We were given a breakdown of the takings for 2009 - just the takings with no expenses shown - which were just over £6,000. What we were told is that the net profit from the event is about £3,000.

That's the upside, or maybe I should call it the potential upside. But for every upside there is a downside and this event certainly has several of those. (Yes, I know - I should be positive and look at them as challenges rather than obstacles.) I mentioned the programme. This has always been produced "in house" with Rotarians selling ad space to cover production costs. OK, we could no doubt produce the thing, but selling ad space is not something for which any of our Lions are noted.

Another challenge is the sheer slog of printing 500 entry forms, all the address labels from the database, stuffing the entry forms into envelopes and fixing the address labels. The Rotarians also put stamps on the envelopes but I think the Post Office would frank them if asked. See? Already I have reduced the workload! If I go on like this we'll soon convince the club this is an opportunity not to be missed. It's not as if we are re-inventing the wheel. The Rotarians have run the event for years and have ironed out all (or most) of the snags. They will let us have all the computer records and artwork. I think we should go for it. Let's hope the club agrees.