Governance and finance

Many leisure-time music groups regularly consider making project fund applications to arts councils, trusts or foundations whilst others are considering it for the first time. This event will walk you through some of the usual things you can expect, and equip you with some best practice and tips to set you up for a much better chance of success, whether you're applying for £250 or for £250,000!

We'll talk about:

Running your group is a rewarding but challenging role. Our regular meetups are a chance for you to meet and share learning and ideas with other Northern Ireland groups facing similar challenges, explore specific issues affecting leisure-time music making in Northern Ireland and consider how we can work collaboratively to find solutions and advocate for the sector. 

Stephen McNally, Northern Ireland manager, will be leading this session.

In this meetup we'll:

Running your group is a rewarding but challenging role. Our regular meetups are a chance for you to meet and share learning and ideas with other Wales groups facing similar challenges, explore specific issues affecting leisure-time music making in Wales and consider how we can work collaboratively to find solutions and advocate for the sector. 

Miranda Glen, Wales manager, will be leading this session.

In this meetup we'll:

Running your group is a rewarding but challenging role. Our regular meetups are a chance for you to meet and share learning and ideas with other Scotland groups facing similar challenges, explore specific issues affecting leisure-time music making in Scotland and consider how we can work collaboratively to find solutions and advocate for the sector. 

Alison Reeves, Scotland manager, will be leading this session.

In this meetup we'll:

Often we think of income ‘only’ in terms of funding, subscriptions or ticket sales. There definitely is a lot to delve into on those three topics, but is there more we could be exploring? Are we thinking about the whole financial picture?

70% of Making Music performing groups and 58% of volunteer promoters break even every year; but 15% and 23% respectively regularly make a loss. So finances are always a topic groups are thinking about, to maintain that balancing act of breaking even, yet remaining accessible to participants and audiences in their community.

Your Making music membership offers a wealth of benefits. They are designed to support you running your music group, to save time, effort and money, as well as offer ideas and inspiration.

But are you making the most of your membership? In this event we will explain what you have access to - and how we can help.

We'll talk about some of the main benefits:

This year our AGM will be followed by member meet-up - this is your association, we are always interested in hearing from you!

Both events will be online with a short break in between. We expect the AGM to run from 6pm to 6.30pm and the meet up to be 6.40pm to 7.45pm.  You can book to attend just the AGM, just the meet-up, or both, using the links below.  

AGM

If you’d like your group and your audience to be more diverse and inclusive, thinking about how you recruit and welcome people is crucial. And if you want to increase your membership and your audiences, recruiting and welcoming new people in a way that is inclusive means you’ve more chance of success. Whatever your driver, there are actions you can take that will remove the barriers to joining your activity and provide access to more people. 

You may never have considered becoming a trustee and may not know much about what it involves: find out more at this event about how your skills and experience could help Making Music and what you would be expected to do.

Making Music is a charity and 9 of its (maximum 14) trustees are elected by and from the membership. They are ultimately responsible for the charity and help set the strategic direction of Making Music and oversee its work.