Annual Review 2010: Promoting a British Success Story
Enhancing service for members
With over 1,800 individual registrants for our members' only area, it is
essential that
our internal communications are effective. We help our members keep up to date
through our extensive archive of web-based material. Members can keep abreast
of the latest industry issues through the online alert service and a series of
online
newsletters, such as the Week Ahead.
We re-focused our efforts to ensure we deliver valuable services for our members
and in particular our Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) companies. To enable
all
FDF members to benefit from our knowledge and expertise wherever their
location,
we launched a series of FDF webinars in 2010. These have covered a range of
topical subjects such as health claims legislation and new advertising codes
and
have been hugely popular. The CEO Forum was also re-launched to give Managing
Directors from our SME companies an opportunity to meet informally and discuss
the
current and future challenges that are affecting their businesses.
FDF's successful Sales Directors' Forum programme provided members with
opportunities to meet senior trading directors from Morrisons, the
Co-operative,
Tesco and Booker. More SME members were encouraged to attend these meetings
which strengthened the voice of the group.
Members in Scotland continued to benefit from SFDF's Suppliers' Forum, with key
events with companies including 3663, Aldi and Dobbies.
The sector associations and groups managed within FDF continue to use
their expertise to provide specific sector representation and information to UK
Government, trade, regulatory and enforcement bodies and, in liaison with their
European sector associations, to EU political institutions. They also provided
advice and information to member companies and external stakeholders on all
non-competitive areas affecting the sector. Activities included co-ordinated
sector
lobbying on the proposed EU Food Information Regulation, providing effective
issues
management and communicating sector positions to opinion formers.
Our Commercial Partner membership category continues to provide members with
a new range of discounts, added value information and services provided by
leading
companies in the fields of law, accountancy, consultancy, market insight,
insurance,
communications and software solutions.
FDF is constantly striving to ensure its members get the best possible value
from
their subscription fee. We operate to highly professional standards of
financial
management, tracking spending closely and consistently delivering a break even
budget, dealing with industry consolidations and other unforeseen events as
they
occur.
Currently, 85% of FDF's total income is from company members' subscriptions.
About 70% of total expenditure relates to staff costs and communications
programmes. Building expenses, travel and representation costs, administrative
expenses and the subscription to our European body CIAA account for the
remainder
of the expenditure.
Our priority is to ensure that we demonstrate how the organisation makes a
difference for our members and that it does so in an efficient way that makes
best
use of our available resources.
Next page: A strong voice for the industry in Scotland
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