How GBMCC Operates
How the club works
Gay Bikers' is first and foremost a members' Club. We have no paid workers, so everything has to be done by members who volunteer their own time and energy. We rely on the contribution that every member can make to ensure events take place and contact is maintained.
Our structure is simple, but so that we can spread the workload it has to involve quite a few people. We have a committee which is elected every year at the Annual General Meeting - usually held in May.
The committee currently consists of 8 Officers:
- Chair
- Secretary
- Treasurer
- Membership Secretary
- International Secretary
- Diary Co-ordinator
- Events Manager
- Web & Social Media Manager
14 Local Area Contacts:
- Scotland
- North East
- Yorkshire
- North West and North Wales
- West Midlands
- East Midlands
- East Anglia
- Thames Valley
- South
- South East
- South West
- South Wales and Borders
- London
- Overseas
The committee meets 4 or 5 times a year to make important decisions about the Clubs future but most of the work of running it from day to day is done by individuals or by small groups getting together to do a particular job. Committee meetings are notified to all members who are invited to attend and take part.
Choosing the committee is just one of the functions of the AGM, which has usually been a harmonious meeting lasting 1 to 2 hours. It's an opportunity for an exchange of information and views on what's been going on in the Club in the past year, what we've done with members' money, to fix the subscriptions, sometimes to elect honorary members or decide if we want to affiliate to other organisations and to discuss issues of particular importance put forward as motions or brought up in general discussions.
We are a nationwide Club, with members spread around 14 geographical areas.
Area Reps, sometimes with the help of assistant area Reps, co-ordinate local activities to ensure a varied programme to suit all interests both social and riding. When you first join your area, your area Rep will have been told and will get in touch with you so that you can meet some of the local members and get a feel to what's going on in your part of the country.
There are lots of ways individual members can help without being involved in the committee. At the simplest level, just showing your support by turning up to fixtures is a valuable first step. In fact we want to see members making the running in suggesting new ideas to area Reps. We have to remember that our area Reps are often hard-pressed - they often seem to be busy people in the first place! - and offering to help will ease their load and ensure that what the Club arranges is what the members really want to do. Organising a fixture once in a while doesn't take any special skills beyond common sense reasonable riding ability and fitting in with what other members want to do. There are people in the Club with a great variety of talents that can be useful- professional or amateur from copy writing to route-planning from tea-making to languages.
Offer a hand if you can.