CEO message - May

Hello everyone,

I hope you are all well and looking forward to a busy summer.

As ever it is hugely busy time with so much going on at the Lord’s Taverners. A few weeks ago we held the Taverners AGM at our base in Victoria. We had nearly 200 votes which importantly made the meeting quorate, and all items were voted through, so thank you to those members who exercised their voting rights. I would also like to add a special thank you to those members who came along in person on the day, there were some good discussions, and it was nice to see some familiar faces. The AGM was hosted by our Chair Tim Luckhurst who gave an overview of the last year and the work we have undertaken across the charity. This was followed by an update on the annual report and the financials from Treasurer and Financial Trustee Francis D’Souza. Our Director of Engagement and Partnerships Will Gogerty gave an update on the work being undertaken following the membership consultation in the last year too, and we introduced our new Membership Manager Rachel Roy who is now in post and busy contacting members. Will also talked about all of the exciting plans being made for next year’s 75^th anniversary celebrations and thanked all of those members who have already shared ideas and put themselves forward to run events and activities to make it a really special year. I finished proceedings with an overview of what progress has been made in delivering our strategy and what plans we have for the year ahead, and beyond, as we start to think about our next strategy for 2025-2028. We also had half a dozen or so questions from members on financial sustainability and charitable activity, all of which will be published in the minutes in due course. Please mark your diaries for next year’s AGM, which will be on 16 May and will also include an event that will hopefully entice a few more people to come along and make a day of it.

Here at the Tavs we work very hard to ensure that the work we do involves partnering with other charities, businesses and organisations who, like us, work hard to ensure the game of cricket increasingly becomes more inclusive and diverse, especially working hard with those young people who face inequality to overcome the challenges they face. Therefore, I am really proud and delighted to be able to share that this month we have announced two new key partnerships with fantastic, innovative and values driven organisations.

One is with FabLittleBag, and more details about our partnership with them can be found by clicking here, where you can read about how we’re playing our role in ensuring that Period Poverty, a barrier to participation in cricket, and sport in general for girls and women, is eradicated. This great news followed another key announcement about a partnership with Her Game Too, which you can read more about here. Her Game Too is an anti-sexism campaign movement led by female sports fans from clubs across the country and these two critically important and values driven partnerships will see us continue to play our role in the grassroots and recreational game and broader sporting landscape to enable girls and women to overcome the barriers and challenges they face. On a personal level, as the proud dad to an 11 year-old sports mad and cricket playing daughter, my own family know how important these matters are. Therefore, I am very proud of, and grateful to, the team here, and Katie Holland in particular for leading the Lord’s Taverners through this work. I hope everyone gets behind these campaigns and key aspects of our work, so that everyone impacted sees and experiences the positive changes that we all collectively make to ensure cricket becomes the welcoming, inclusive, diverse and positively engaging experience for everyone that we strive for it to be.

Speaking of playing our role in working to ensure cricket becomes the most inclusive sport in the UK… myself and our Programmes Director Martin Darlow attended the ECB AGM at Sophia Gardens, Cardiff in May. It was great to hear new ECB Managing Director of Recreational Cricket Leshia Hawkins join Chair Richard Thompson, CEO Richard Gould and other senior staff from the ECB to talk to leaders from all the cricket counties and charities talk about the continued development of, and investment in, grassroots and recreational cricket.

On the day, talking to numerous CEO’s and leaders from right across the game it was evident that the Lord’s Taverners is firmly established as a key organisation in the game. Our reputation, credibility and track record is highly valued, recognised and increasingly understood by so many and lots of exciting opportunities will continue to come our way with the multitude of partnerships that we have with the county cricket boards and foundations who want to do more with us and our teams. One thing that is critical to this is the additional funding that we bring to the game through our member led activities right across the country. All those lunches, dinners, golf days, challenge events and other innovative ideas enable us to match funding from Government, ECB and other key funders to grow the game, to engage more young people and to ensure inclusion and diversity is at the heart of what we do. The Taverners is well and truly recognised as a key part of the whole game’s drive to ensure cricket is a leading sport in providing those opportunities for the millions of young people facing the challenges of inequality.

Looking ahead I am really excited about one of the flag ship events in the Taverners calendar, our National Table Cricket Finals held at Lord’s in the Nursery Pavilion on 27 June from 10:30am. A big thanks to our friends at MCC for providing the venue free of charge so that we can offer the opportunity for 12 teams from right across the UK, which is nearly 100 young people living with a physical and/or learning disability, to play at the iconic Home of Cricket. If you would like to come along and enjoy the experience on the day, please get in touch with Liz Kuda from our programmes team by emailing liz.kuda@lordstaverners.org. I hope to see you all there, it is a fantastic, inspiring and exciting day!

Finally, following the huge success of our London Marathon runners raising over £175,000 in April, I want to finish this month’s update with a huge thank you to host of the Final Word Podcast and big Taverners supporter Adam Collins and the team of nearly 50 people who all took part in the Edinburgh Marathon Festival over a wet bank holiday weekend at the end of May. Adam, drawing upon the huge network of podcast subscribers, friends and other cricket lovers, has helped us put a team of 50 people together including our own staff team members Becky Howie and Ben Collins, all of whom who ran either the 10k, half marathon or full marathon at the festival. Together they have raised close to their target of £30,000 for the Taverners which is incredible. Big thanks to President David Gower and friends of the Taverners Monty Panesar and Toby Tarrant for sending good luck messages to the group in advance too. If anyone would like to donate to and/or share the teams fundraising efforts please go to this link and help them reach that magic total and beyond… Thank you in advance.

Adam and the team are committed to go even bigger next year as part of our 75^th Anniversary celebrations, so if you fancy joining the team, having a great weekend in Edinburgh and taking on the challenge to raise some funds as part of a close knit team, please get in touch with my colleague Sadique via Sadique.ahmed@lordstaverners.org. I’m looking forward to being part of next year’s event myself and hope many more Taverners will join us to make it even bigger next year.

Enjoy the summer everyone, I look forward to seeing you all at a Taverners event or activity at some point soon.

Regards,

Mark