ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING 2022 – MINUTES 

2022 AGM held on the 02 March 2023

1. Welcome & Apologies

Sue welcomed everyone to the AGM and expressed that it was her first time running an AGM which made her a little nervous. We had a total of 24 ladies’ booked to attend of which 22 were members and 2 were non-members.  18 members were in attendance on the morning. Formal apologies were sent by Emma Dunk and Carissa Moopanar..

2. Notice of meeting

Notice of the meeting was sent out to our Mailchimp database on the 27 January 2023 informing and inviting ladies to book to attend the AGM. The 2021 AGM Minutes and 2022 AGM Agenda were sent to all ladies booked to attend the AGM on 28 February by the administrator, Nicci Hosking.  

3. Approval of previous minutes

Sue read out the minutes from our 2021 AGM. The 2021 minutes were approved by all in attendance. Proposer: Tanya Fleischer. Seconded by: Karen Stark

4. Treasurer Report

Melissa Jacobs of MJ Chartered Accountants requested to present the annual financials earlier in the meeting, as she had to leave early. Melissa went through the annual financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2022. It was advised that should any attendees wish to request a copy of the financials to view, they must please send their request in writing to the organisation by emailing [email protected]

5. 2021 Chairman Report

Sue began her report by saying that it had been an honour to lead the committee and members back into the space of in-person meetings following the pandemic and the dramatic impact on business, particularly in KZN, over the past 2 years.

Meetings

KZN WIB transitioned back to hosting only in-person meetings from November of 2021.  The newly appointed 2022/2023 committee consisted mostly of committee members who had not previously been involved in running in-person meetings as committee members, which resulted in some shifts in the way meetings were held as we “found our feet” in the face-to-face format again.

Sue explained that we had noticed  a steady rise in engagement with our members and attendees and had the delightful problem of needing to limit members to only 10 Lucky Draws once again at the meetings.

We continued to host our meetings at The Durban Jewish Club (DJC), with one exception due to a lack of availability for our May 2022 meeting.  In this instance, we moved to The Durban Country Club.

We experienced a major challenge with catering in the last few months of 2022 as a result of the DJCs chef being employed elsewhere.  His standard of catering was exemplary, and we would like to formally acknowledge him for his efforts and thank him for going the extra mile during our meetings, much to the delight of members and visitors.

Following his departure, we had a number of complaints resulting in a concerted effort by the committee to find affordable and suitable alternative catering options.  At the time of this report, we are experimenting with different options which meet our budget constraints while ensuring member and guest satisfaction.  Although the focus of our meetings and organisation is not on catering, it is still an important part of the experience at our events. The committee is making every effort to ensure we offer quality food while minimising the cost impact as far as possible.

Membership info 2018 – 2022

The following is a reflection of paid-up memberships, and not the number of ladies on our database.

December 2018 – 84
December 2019 – 92
December 2020 – 95
December 2021 – 93
December 2022 – 95
end February 2023 – 107

Meeting attendance 2018 – 2022

Meeting Attendance	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	AVG
2019	99	98	100	83	83	84	84	97	112	94	93
2020	100	90	0	53	62	62	64	56	42	46	64
2021	48	58	47	62	57	51	60	51	55	64	55
2022	68	51	57	67	62	72	65	73	75	67	66

The above demonstrates the impact of the pandemic, unrest and the KZN floods on meeting attendance, resulting in concerted efforts by the current committee to increase meeting attendance and grow our membership.

Meeting and Membership Pricing

KZN WIB membership fees have been the same for 13 years and it needs to be noted that food costs have risen dramatically in the past few years. It is largely because of the extreme generosity from DJC that we have been able to keep our meeting and membership prices low.  However, during the February 2023 committee meeting, it was unanimously agreed that prices should increase with immediate effect. 

Workshops

KZN WIB continued to host successful monthly workshops from February to November, with the exception of April which had a number of public and school holidays.  The workshops were hosted, for the most part, at the Citidel Co-Working Space with some being held at Durban & Coast SPCA, and were generally well supported.

Administrative Support

During 2022, we amended our employment arrangement with Nicci Hosking and moved her from a part-time employee to a service provider on a Service level Agreement.  The move was made in consultation with Nicci and agreed to by the committee and Nicci.  KZN WIB now has no employees and is not required to complete and pay for Workmen’s compensation or UIF, which reduces the administrative burden on our Non-Profit organisation and on our committee.

Charity

Our Charity for 2022 was DKMS, formerly known as the Sunflower Fund.  DKMS, an international Bone Marrow Registry organisation, took over the Sunflower Fund around the time our sponsorship started.  The take-over resulted in a number of personnel changes within the local division of DKMS, making regular meeting attendance challenging for them.  Members and the committee worked hard to support them and we were extremely proud to be able to hand over a cheque for R60,000 in November of 2022.

As per our constitution, charities were nominated, followed by member voting, with the winning charity for 2023 being TAFTA

Sponsorship

NKR Outsourced HR sponsored the first half of the year from February – June 2020, with Cindy Norcott of Pro-Talent sponsoring the 2^nd half, July – November 2022.

It was decided by the committee that sponsorship, which had been changed to 6 monthly during the pandemic, return to a full year from 2023 and ActionCOACH iNala has taken the opportunity to be the 2023 Sponsor.

Committee

Our committee have had some changes during the 2022/2023 period with Amanda Anderson, Kate Oliver and Leilah Colley resigning due to increased or changing work commitments.  We thank them all for their contributions during their time. Special thanks go to Amanda for the many years of work she put into running our social media as part of both TLS Studios and The Social Lamb.

Robyn Keulder of Cherish Designs agreed to sponsor the social media activities and has done so successfully for the past few months.  The committee unanimously agreed to invite Robyn Keulder to join the committee, which she accepted.  We welcome her and thank her for her willingness.

In addition to our usual Social Media, we have received the following media Coverage from Emma Dunk from Em-Between PR and Communications:

Total media coverage for 2022: R140 038.44
Total media coverage for 2023 (so far/to date): R158 306.87

Website

A decision was made to update the brand and website appearance for KZN WIB when it was discovered that we did not have licensing rights to the previous fonts. The committee worked with 1 Day Webs to choose a new look and feel and the relevant fonts were licensed in late 2022 to ensure that they could be used in the future. The Website was given a brand refresh and the new look finalised and rolled out in February 2023. Feedback has been positive. 

Other

The constitution was circulated to two attorneys to review the content for any possible discrimination and confirmed that we are aligned with our mandate to support and encourage women in business.

Young Women in Business has not been a focus area and is on hold for now. 

Sue concluded her chairman’s report by saying that the committee look forward to the year ahead and thank the members for their ongoing support.

6. General

Chrystal Austin queried the membership fee increase, stating it was increased minimally (+/- R50) during her term. Nicci Hosking explained that all KZNWIB data and information was lost when her laptop was stolen in August 2021 during her home invasion. Nicci explained that she had managed to recover most of the KZN files via what was saved on the website, Dropbox, hard copies in her filing cabinet,  and previous email correspondence. Nicci also reassured everyone that since this shocking incident, all KZNWIB information and data is now safely stored on their Google Drive to ensure that this will NEVER happen again. Mel Gard and Chrystal Austin said they would double check if they had any information from during their respective terms as Chairperson such as their Chairman Reports that they could send through to be included in the Google Drive archives. Chrystal Austin also  wanted to know the statistics of where our new members are coming from (word of mouth, social media, website)  and if we have a way of measuring this. Nicci Hosking explained that we could pull this information from our membership application forms spreadsheet from the website to determine the answers. Chrystal Austin also queried the workshop expenses and suggested we look for venues that could sponsor the workshops going forward to reduce our costs. Tracy-Lee Sydney suggested we approach ActionCOACH iNala to see if they had a venue we could use for our workshops. A discussion about Nicci Hosking immigrating to the UK at the end of the year and who would replace her, along with the procedures in place was had by Mel Gard, Chrystal Austin, Senta Seele, Sue St.Leger, Karen Stark, Tilanie Grote, Jolene Schefermann and Nicci Hosking. It was agreed that recruitment of any service provider be decided on by the current Chairperson, Vice-chair and at least two past Chair Ladies and that the current committee ensure they do an annual review of the membership fees mid-year (June/July) to determine if any increases should be implemented in the year ahead. Mel Gard reminded the current committee that the funds raised in December at the year-end event are for the organisation and not allocated to the chosen charity. Mel Gard then congratulated Sue St Leger and the current committee for doing such a wonderful job in presenting a smooth, well-run monthly meeting in spite of the many ‘behind-the-scenes’ hiccups we were experiencing. 

Amendments to the Constitution:

We propose removing the following points from the Constitution as it is not relevant or beneficial to the organisations of our members.

5.2.3 Honorary Members
5.2.3.1 The Committee may at their discretion grant to any KZNWIB member an Honorary Membership at no cost to the member, in recognition of their contributions to the Organisation and the KZN Business Community.
5.2.3.2 The number of honorary members is at the discretion of the KZNWIB Committee.

5.2.3.3 An honorary member is neither eligible to be elected to the Committee nor to have voting rights.

We propose that the wording be changed to include an annual review of membership fees to be made mid-year (June/July) at a committee meeting.

5.5 Membership Fees

5.5.1 The Committee shall determine the annual fees payable by members and if an increase shall be implemented during a mid-year annual review, along with the due date for payment thereof. 

We propose the following re-wording for point 6.4

6.4 The Administrator, as the sole salaried Member of the Committee, will be a service provider to the organisation and will be evaluated every 12 months. 

The following changes were also proposed to point 10.8

10.8. For the purposes of donating proceeds to the nominated charity, all monies in the bank account and in the form of cash will be tallied after the November meeting and before the December meeting annually, after all expenses for November have been deducted.

Income to be retained annually (not to be included in the Charity total) includes the following:

1. Cost of 2 meetings, including cost of 1 seat for Sponsor and 1 seat for Charity.
2. 3 months salary for Administrator
3. 2 months UIF payments to be removed and replaced with any miscellaneous costs
4. 1 month’s fixed costs to cover any additional services required or used by the organisation

The above changes to the Constitution were made by a resolution, voted upon and passed by no less than two thirds of the members who were present at the Annual General Meeting. 

7. Vote of thanks and Closure

Sue concluded the meeting by thanking the ladies for attending our Annual General Meeting with the closure time being 11:59 am verbally noted by Nicci Hosking. Thank you so much to you all for attending our AGM.

 Many thanks and Kind Regards,

Sue St. Leger Stretch(Chairperson 2022-2023)	Bianca Johnson(Vice-chair 2022-2023)