Have Butterfly-Conservation gone nuts?

[lee3764]

I'm going to join in the moan because I tried to Join BC last year just before Christmas at their special 50% off offer.

I clicked the email link only to find that it was a normal link nothing about joining. I dutifully asked the question, how do I join?

No reply whatsoever. I eventually tried downloading the form to join only to find the offer of half price ran out two days previous.

Any charity running like this seems doomed to failure in my opinion. I was extremely p****d off with them. Please tell me apart from actually helping butterflies why should I join. Would my money be better spent with the BDS (British Dragonfly Society)?

You tell me.

You usually join BC to help the butterflies!! What other main reason is there? I would have thought that with the sale of 1 and a half of your DVD's on all the British Butterflies you could then have afforded to join BC without stooping to being "p****d off with them"!! I actually e-mailed you from your weblink/site back when your DVD went on sale first (nearly 2 months ago I believe?)to enquire about how to pay by cheque & got no reply whatsoever from you either! I have been a BC member for over 20 years & have never looked for half price membership. Indeed I enrolled many members in the early days of our Cornwall branch of Butterfly Conservation when I was membership secretary & still paid full price for my membership of BC even though I wasn't very well off. Perhaps a simple phone call to BC Head Office would have solved your issue. I have always found the BC office staff polite & helpful but it's easy for forum members to have a pop at those people and the BC charity who I'm sure work hard whilst at the same time during the day some members question their wages or actual job from their keyboard???!!!
Join your local branch if not already a member & get your hands grubby on a habitat management day instead of having a pop at a caring charity that does do a pretty good job in a very difficult environment.
Comments anyone/BC members/staff?
Lee (Cornwall).....Co Founder member of Cornwall BC Branch in 1993 & still an active committee member.

[Jack Harrison]

Lee

...it's easy for forum members to have a pop at those people and the BC charity who I'm sure work hard whilst at the same time during the day some members question their wages or actual job from their keyboard???!!!

At first sight, that appears to be fair comment. But bear in mind that age and minor disabilities creep up on all of us eventually; many older people are not as physically able as they might like to be. The lucky ones amongst us, despite having less-than-ideal bodies, still have active brains and surely that entitles us to comment on what is going well and what isn’t?

Jack

[Cotswold Cockney]

I feel suitable chastened by Neil’s comments about not having looked at the BC Annual Report.

Perhaps the most significant piece of enlightenment was on page 56:
“No employee earned £60,000 per annum or more (including taxable benefits but excluding employer pension contributions) during the period.”
So while my point about average and median remains, it would seem that the Chief Executive is not on a huge salary; thus even the most junior clerks will be getting get sensible wages. With the exception of not providing a breakdown of actual salaries and wages, (Why so reticent? Or have I missed something?) I have to say that the report is wholly transparent.

One thing abundantly clear is the decentralised structure of BC. I remember years ago when I joined being amazed that I had to join individual branches rather than the organisation as a whole. That is decentralisation in the extreme. I don’t happen to like excessive decentralisation in ANY field. Take the NHS. N stands for NATIONAL. Yet it is anything BUT national with post code lotteries, local budgets, and so on; it sometimes seems to be pot luck as to whether or not someone can get a particular treatment.

Still I had better get off my hobby horse.

Maybe I had expected too much “hands-on” from BC Headquarters. HQ concentrates on other matters - making deals with Marks & Spencer, cleverly getting £40,000 from Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, etc, etc. That's impressive.

With a better understanding of the function of HQ and the devolution to the branches of the more mundane matters, I am able now to take a less cynical view.

Jack

Jack, I suspect the key word here is 'earned'. There's a world of difference between being paid and earned.

The Nation has far too many over rewarded non-jobs, jobs for life and those coupled with huge rewards for failure are far too widespread. That plays an ever increasing part in why the Nation is in its current financial status. I am not pointing the finger directly to BC here and all employed therein may indeed actually earn their pay... For reasons I shall not go into, I now have an extreme distrust of those who administer a number of charities.

I have done my share of shrub clearance and selective planting in the past and not received one thin penny for my efforts and more importantly, my time ... nor expected one.

Roll on the warmer days of Spring... this long winter has been a real boring experience for me with one notable exception; a flock of Waxwings in the local trees coming down to feed on ornamental fruits still on leafless garden shrubs. The first time I've positively seen these birds ever. I was given a tatty Observer's Book of Birds when a small boy and that had a fine colour illustration of the Waxwing. All those years have passed and I never knowingly saw one until last month only a few yards from my home, a flock of these beautiful birds.

Yes, roll on the spring.. birdies singing, Daffodils a bloomin'...
..

[JohnR]

Perhaps the most significant piece of enlightenment was on page 56:
“No employee earned £60,000 per annum or more (including taxable benefits but excluding employer pension contributions) during the period.”

Maybe I had expected too much “hands-on” from BC Headquarters. HQ concentrates on other matters - making deals with Marks & Spencer, cleverly getting £40,000 from Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, etc, etc. That's impressive.

Jack

Thanks for pointing that out, I shall join you in being less cynical about emoluments. However I still feel that almost everything published by HQ lacks any meat. I know that this is more than made up by the branch magazines. Maybe that's the policy, HQ raises money and public awareness and the branches study and preserve butterfly and moths and their habitats.