A message from your Club President Chris Murphy
2024 BSSA President’s Report
Good Evening Members and thankyou for coming along tonight to our AGM.
2023 was another very exciting and event filled year for our Club.
The BSSA held all our Club Meetings in the Unley Hall, and our shows for the second year went ahead as per normal in the Westbourne Park Community Hall. Our Christmas function was again held at the Goodwood Hotel, and was extremely well supported. In fact we overfilled the room the Hotel booked for us.
George will talk about the Shows in his report, but my first vote of thanks is for George for being our Show Manager and the key organizer of the BSSA’s Shows. Our Shows are a unique opportunity to compete against fellow members from not only our Club but the other Clubs in SA as well, and regardless of where your birds place, our Shows are must attend events for our members. If you want to see all the different varieties of our wonderful bird on display, then the Shows are your first point of call.
Just on Shows, I would like to mention our 4 class winners at the 2023 ANBC Show. Kelwyn with his Clearwing, Jason & Wayne with their Dilute ( 2 years in a row), Ken & Janet with the Dominant Pied Hen and Holmes Family with the White Cap. The last time our Club had more winners in a single year was 1981 when we had 6 individual winners.
Our monthly entertainment was once again extremely varied over the past 12 months, and our thanks goes to Troy for coordinating the program of events. Some of the highlights were The Come and Try Nights, the vet talk by Hamish Baron and the aviary presentation from David Pace. A special mention to the group that organized the 75th birthday of our Club in June. Even a delay of 2 weeks due to a covid outbreak amongst our members did not dampen the enthusiasm for the celebrations on the night.
This year I would really like to give the night shows a real push. Visitors have told us that they would like to see birds at the meetings. So we have to find the magic solution that ensures we have a nice selection of birds at our meetings. Certainly when Dad and I first went to our Club in 1981, there would be birds lined up on both sides of the Hall, and we still managed to hear the guest speakers over the noise.
I also believe our Come & Try Nights will need some refining to ensure they are as successful as we would like them to be. Are we targeting the right audience on facebook, and how do we encourage people to get off their lounge chair and come along to a meeting on a Tuesday evening.
I hope all our members heard of the successful Budgiefest which was staged by the BCSA in conjunction with the Nest Feather Show in October. The attendance exceeded expectations, so this year, we need to aim to improve our conversion of visitors from BudgieFest to our November meeting which will be held a few days afterwards. My learnings from Budgie Fest are that we need to be more
local, and target the people who live in the suburbs around our Shows in a more specific manner. Most suburbs have their own facebook pages – this could be our way in to appealing to the general public.
Our Social Media presence continues to grow and we are continuing building our presence. The reality is that we need to grow our Club for our hobby to be around in the years to come.
The BSSA You Tube Channel was not added to in 2023, so our subscribers only lifted from 670 to 734 in the past 12 months. I have suggested to the Committee that we record our meetings, or at least the entertainment section of the meetings and post these to our Channel. So if you have the ability to operate a camera and some editing skills, the Club needs your help ASAP.
Our facebook page has over 4,400 members, I think the highest number in Australia of any Club based page, and an increase of 2100 just in 2023 alone. Remembering that “Budgie Lovers Australia” has over 11,000 members, and is an Australian only page. Our page whilst having a considerable number of international members, is still a great source of communication with the wider budgerigar audience.
Our website has had over 58,000 visits. An increase of 21,000 in the last 12 months. Danny has done a wonderful job in looking after our website – thankyou very, very much.
Our on-line auctions continued to be well supported during 2023. I cannot emphasise enough how important the auctions are to the profile of our Club and the hobby in general. Many of our new members have found our Club via the auctions and its vitally important the Club continues the auctions which ultimately can only be sustained with support from our members in providing their birds for the Club to sell. Marie, Danny and Ken are the backbone behind our auctions, and our thanks goes to those three members for their continual work over the past 12 months.
The pet bird on line auction we ran in early December was more successful than we thought it would be, not that we really had any ideas as to how it would go. Maybe this is another option to encourage people to become part of our Club.
Before we leave the auctions, I just want to read a quote from our Club page at the front of every auction.
“The BSSA is a not for profit organisation and all proceeds go towards the promotion of the club and the hobby.”
This statement means different things to everybody, so shortly, I will ask you all to jot down 1 or 2 things that immediately come to mind when you think about “promotion of the club and the hobby”. I’m not saying we will be able to do everything we come up with, but it will help the Committee with our planning for the future.
In closing I would again like to thank the balance of the Committee for guiding the BSSA through 2023.
Sue as Secretary is always on the go, running here and there, and can’t sit still. Thankyou very much for all the work you do. You can rely on Sue to get the word out.
Ian – our Ring Officer was so organized and planned that when Ken stepped in unexpectedly in December, all the paperwork was in place and the handing out of the rings was an easy job to complete.
Paul – lots of publicity via Gumtree.
Tracy – approves all the payments via electronic banking.
Tom – wise head – asks excellent questions about why some things happen and sometimes why they don’t.
Janet – always happy to lend a hand at our Shows and our meetings, and always has good ideas at our meetings.
Jane – always thinks about things from a new members perspective.
Kerry – the trading table is a constant job. There is always lots going on and its such an important part of our meetings.
I would also like to thank our members. So much support is given to our Committee and the Club by the wider membership, that it cannot go unmentioned.
So, in closing I wish you all well in 2024. I hope everyone breeds lots of healthy strong birds and we flood our shows with stack of entries.
Good Evening Members and thankyou for coming along tonight to our AGM.
2023 was another very exciting and event filled year for our Club.
The BSSA held all our Club Meetings in the Unley Hall, and our shows for the second year went ahead as per normal in the Westbourne Park Community Hall. Our Christmas function was again held at the Goodwood Hotel, and was extremely well supported. In fact we overfilled the room the Hotel booked for us.
George will talk about the Shows in his report, but my first vote of thanks is for George for being our Show Manager and the key organizer of the BSSA’s Shows. Our Shows are a unique opportunity to compete against fellow members from not only our Club but the other Clubs in SA as well, and regardless of where your birds place, our Shows are must attend events for our members. If you want to see all the different varieties of our wonderful bird on display, then the Shows are your first point of call.
Just on Shows, I would like to mention our 4 class winners at the 2023 ANBC Show. Kelwyn with his Clearwing, Jason & Wayne with their Dilute ( 2 years in a row), Ken & Janet with the Dominant Pied Hen and Holmes Family with the White Cap. The last time our Club had more winners in a single year was 1981 when we had 6 individual winners.
Our monthly entertainment was once again extremely varied over the past 12 months, and our thanks goes to Troy for coordinating the program of events. Some of the highlights were The Come and Try Nights, the vet talk by Hamish Baron and the aviary presentation from David Pace. A special mention to the group that organized the 75th birthday of our Club in June. Even a delay of 2 weeks due to a covid outbreak amongst our members did not dampen the enthusiasm for the celebrations on the night.
This year I would really like to give the night shows a real push. Visitors have told us that they would like to see birds at the meetings. So we have to find the magic solution that ensures we have a nice selection of birds at our meetings. Certainly when Dad and I first went to our Club in 1981, there would be birds lined up on both sides of the Hall, and we still managed to hear the guest speakers over the noise.
I also believe our Come & Try Nights will need some refining to ensure they are as successful as we would like them to be. Are we targeting the right audience on facebook, and how do we encourage people to get off their lounge chair and come along to a meeting on a Tuesday evening.
I hope all our members heard of the successful Budgiefest which was staged by the BCSA in conjunction with the Nest Feather Show in October. The attendance exceeded expectations, so this year, we need to aim to improve our conversion of visitors from BudgieFest to our November meeting which will be held a few days afterwards. My learnings from Budgie Fest are that we need to be more
local, and target the people who live in the suburbs around our Shows in a more specific manner. Most suburbs have their own facebook pages – this could be our way in to appealing to the general public.
Our Social Media presence continues to grow and we are continuing building our presence. The reality is that we need to grow our Club for our hobby to be around in the years to come.
The BSSA You Tube Channel was not added to in 2023, so our subscribers only lifted from 670 to 734 in the past 12 months. I have suggested to the Committee that we record our meetings, or at least the entertainment section of the meetings and post these to our Channel. So if you have the ability to operate a camera and some editing skills, the Club needs your help ASAP.
Our facebook page has over 4,400 members, I think the highest number in Australia of any Club based page, and an increase of 2100 just in 2023 alone. Remembering that “Budgie Lovers Australia” has over 11,000 members, and is an Australian only page. Our page whilst having a considerable number of international members, is still a great source of communication with the wider budgerigar audience.
Our website has had over 58,000 visits. An increase of 21,000 in the last 12 months. Danny has done a wonderful job in looking after our website – thankyou very, very much.
Our on-line auctions continued to be well supported during 2023. I cannot emphasise enough how important the auctions are to the profile of our Club and the hobby in general. Many of our new members have found our Club via the auctions and its vitally important the Club continues the auctions which ultimately can only be sustained with support from our members in providing their birds for the Club to sell. Marie, Danny and Ken are the backbone behind our auctions, and our thanks goes to those three members for their continual work over the past 12 months.
The pet bird on line auction we ran in early December was more successful than we thought it would be, not that we really had any ideas as to how it would go. Maybe this is another option to encourage people to become part of our Club.
Before we leave the auctions, I just want to read a quote from our Club page at the front of every auction.
“The BSSA is a not for profit organisation and all proceeds go towards the promotion of the club and the hobby.”
This statement means different things to everybody, so shortly, I will ask you all to jot down 1 or 2 things that immediately come to mind when you think about “promotion of the club and the hobby”. I’m not saying we will be able to do everything we come up with, but it will help the Committee with our planning for the future.
In closing I would again like to thank the balance of the Committee for guiding the BSSA through 2023.
Sue as Secretary is always on the go, running here and there, and can’t sit still. Thankyou very much for all the work you do. You can rely on Sue to get the word out.
Ian – our Ring Officer was so organized and planned that when Ken stepped in unexpectedly in December, all the paperwork was in place and the handing out of the rings was an easy job to complete.
Paul – lots of publicity via Gumtree.
Tracy – approves all the payments via electronic banking.
Tom – wise head – asks excellent questions about why some things happen and sometimes why they don’t.
Janet – always happy to lend a hand at our Shows and our meetings, and always has good ideas at our meetings.
Jane – always thinks about things from a new members perspective.
Kerry – the trading table is a constant job. There is always lots going on and its such an important part of our meetings.
I would also like to thank our members. So much support is given to our Committee and the Club by the wider membership, that it cannot go unmentioned.
So, in closing I wish you all well in 2024. I hope everyone breeds lots of healthy strong birds and we flood our shows with stack of entries.
