Dunblane Development Trust - General News

Community View - December 2003

Dunblane Development Trust - Making good progress

Activities are continuing to expand as more members are recruited and the organisational infrastructure is put into place. We hope that everyone in Dunblane is appreciating the fact that our environment is much cleaner and tidier than it was before the Trust started, but this only represents the visible aspects of the work we are undertaking. Like the duck on the water, there is a lot of paddling going on below the surface.

Although we already have well over 100 members, we continue to be very active in our recruitment efforts. In addition to a lot of word-of-mouth recruiting effort, we have distributed posters, application forms and information sheets to the Library, Burgh Chambers and all the four newsagents : Ramzan, Hardings, Meldrum and Zahid. Let’s see if we can get past the 200 mark by Spring 2004. A strong membership of course provides the Trust with some direct funding but developing our membership further is vital if we are to undertake a lot of action work ourselves and if we are going to establish strong credibility with potential external fund-providers. If you haven’t yet joined, please do so. If you are a member, but you know someone that is not, please try and help with our recruiting efforts.

We are tight for funds, but we have just sufficient to continue with the development of our activities on a reasonable scale. To substantially increase our income level we have recently established a fund-raising committee. Several applications for grant funding have been lodged with mixed results. At the time of going to press, we have received £1500 in external funding and we have had an application for another £7000 turned down. Applications awaiting decisions total a further £10,000. Where we are unsuccessful, we still gain valuable experience and knowledge to help us become progressively more successful with this difficult task.

On the self-help front, we have run our first event, a cheese and wine party, and we will be organising more events like this because, apart from helping with funds, it provides the opportunity for members to enjoy one-another’s company, to introduce prospective members and to have discussions in an informal atmosphere about the Trust’s activities and challenges. Please support these events if you can.

In addition to the Environment Group making their impact, activities are developing well in the other three Action Groups: Planning & Strategy, Local Economy and Community Facilities. They may not be able to demonstrate the same level of obvious, visual improvements that the Environment Group can, but their contributions are no less important in achieving what this community has said it wants.

Finally, we are pleased to be able to report that we now have almost a full Board of Directors. We have recently welcomed Terence O’Byrne as Administration Director and Bryan Grieve as Environment Director. They join the other nine founder Directors.

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