FEPA News

FEPA NEWS 45 7 News from FEPA • Actively promoting a positive image of philately to the wider world, • Cooperating with other organisations, and engaging with people who are not philatelic collectors in the traditional sense but want to understand how philatelic material can help them to develop their particular subject of interest. • Regularly renewing governing bodies to bring in younger faces. This led on to a discussion about the role that FEPA can play in helping Member organisations to adapt to what was described as, ‘Their biggest change ever: Handling the inevitable decline of membership’. A number of concerns emerged: • Members tend to seek national solutions to problems and rarely ask for advice or share information on best practice. • There is still scope for extending the reach of FEPA’s communications to wider audiences. • Many readers prefer to have the printed version of FEPA NEWS but the costs of printing and distributing it have risen substantially. • The FEPA seminars, as currently organised, require too much effort for too little reward. • FEPA’s resources are extremely limited and plans must be tempered by realism as to how much it can do. An analysis was then carried out to find out what the Board regarded as its most urgent priorities. On the one hand, it was felt that our communications are strong and make a helpful contribution to our Members’ activities. On the other hand, we thought that our links with Members were less close than we would like and this restricted our ability to make the most of our limited resources. We concluded that our priorities should be to: • Involve our Members more actively in FEPA business with the aim of improving cooperation on the central goal of promoting philately. Our intention is to start this inVideo Conference meetings with groups of 8-10 representatives nominated by our Members and topics for discussion defined in advance. Lars Engelbrecht will lead this work and a proposal will be prepared for discussion at the 2024 FEPA Congress in Copenhagen. • Maintain and, if possible, extend our existing communications which are vital to meeting our objectives ‘Sharing Information’ and ‘Supporting Exhibitions’. • Continue with the Awards programme as it is now, although there may be minor changes to the process from time to time. • Take a fresh look at our seminar programme, and at FEPA NEWS, to make sure we are getting the best value from them. Conclusion I will review this programme in my presentation to the FEPA Congress on 19th October when there will also be an opportunity for delegates to comment on it.