Invitation to join the WCF Alumni Association
Posted on Tue, Jan 9, 2024 4:37 PM
Your invitation to join the WCF Alumni Association
A single network to facilitate the continued development, training and progress of all WCF alumni
As an alumnus of a Worshipful Company of Farmers educational course we would like to invite you to join the WCF Alumni Association. This organisation has been created to serve the needs of all of the delegates who have now benefitted from attending a WCF sponsored course, including the Challenge of Rural Leadership, the Advanced Course in Agricultural Business Management, our Cranfield MBA and Cranfield Business Growth Programme Scholars and our Nuffield Scholars. Altogether there are some 1500 of you in total.
The organisation is primarily a network – connecting every member, to all the others to encourage contact, sharing, mentoring and learning from each other. But it is also a means by which members of our alumni can put something back into our industry and help share the benefit of their participation in a WCF course.
We cannot stress too strongly how important it is to help build this new network and I would urge you to follow the link below to your own entry on our database to update it, give us permission to remain in touch with you and sign yourself up as a member of the new association.
What the WCF Alumni Association offers you
1. An exclusive, private database of members and mentors
This will include all members of the association, with each member able to directly manage their own entry in the database, online. The database will also include those members of the Worshipful Company of Farmers prepared to offer mentoring to members of the alumni association.
The database allows you to search for other members, or groups of members, by course; by year; by industry sector and by geography. Password controlled, access to the database will be on WCFA website (www.wcfalumni.org) and only available to paid- up members.
2. A mentoring, matching facility
The database will also include a facility for individual WCF Alumni members and for Liverymen of the Worshipful Company of Farmers, to flag their willingness to act as mentors to other alumni and for members to indicate that they are seeking mentoring – a sort of mentoring dating app!
3. Free attendance at an annual WCF Alumni - Learning Extension Days
This important, annual event in November is exclusive to WCF Alumni association members (plus up to one guest each) for the day there is no fee for WCF Alumni Members, its covered in your membership subscription. But guest must pay £125.00 each.
The Learning Extension Days will take the form of practical workshops, intended to allow the alumni to meet and mix, to share experiences and to continue to develop their personal skill set, through working sessions, hosted by experts and course tutors from the WCF courses.
The day will also include an opportunity to participate in moderated “discussion sessions†with conversations with a variety of industry and educational experts and WCF Alumni during which members can get advice on topics of particular interest to themselves.
The Learning Extension Days also entertains with an optional dinner for WCF Alumni and guests - which is charged for separately.
4.An opportunity to put something back
Many alumni tell us that attending on of our courses is a life-changing experience. Through the WCF Alumni association mentoring facility you have the ability to share that experience and pass on a little of the benefit to others. Your annual subscription provides another, even more direct way, to help other delegates because it includes a voluntary donation of £25 towards a fund for a “WCFA Award†set up exclusively to support those who would like to attend a WCF course but might find the cost, or time off work, difficult to afford.
5. Reduced price tickets for some WCF Events
Attendance to the annual Agricultural Lecture & Dinner which takes place in the spring each year is available at discounted rates.
8. WCF Alumni badge
An exclusive, members only badge, that may be worn at all not just at WCF Alumni and WCF events but all the time, to encourage your friends, colleagues and peer group to ask you about the organisation and to give you the opportunity to get them inspired to apply to attend as you did.
What does it cost to become a member of the WCF Alumni association?
There is no joining fee and each year new delegates completing their WCF course are automatically enrolled as WCF Alumni members (providing they sign the necessary database permissions) and pay nothing in the year of their course. For alumni of all previous courses, and after the initial year for new alumni, there is an annual membership subscription of £95. This is levied to cover the cost of administering the association itself, managing the database and the running of the annual Learning Extension Day.
Included in the Annual Membership is the charitable donation to the WCF's education initiatives of £25 mentioned earlier - which can be gift-aided.
Annual Membership is currently set at £95.00 and is payable via a Direct Debit mandate. For those wishing to charge this through their business an invoice is issued when the direct debit instruction is acknowledged.
How to join
Joining is simple just follow this link https://wcfalumni.org/register to the WCF Alumni website. You will be asked to agree to have your data added to the WCF Alumni database and to give us permission to share it exclusively with the other members. And you will be asked to complete a Direct Debit mandate so we can collect your subscription each year and then you will be able to complete your own entry – to make sure it is complete and accurate you will have access to the database of all other signed-up members.
We look forward to welcoming you to the association
This is an important addition to the, already substantial, benefits of taking one of the WCF’s highly regarded courses. If you have any queries or want to discuss anything about the association, please contact the association secretariat by emailing Duncan Couper on duncan@farmerslivery.org.uk
The WCF Alumni Committee look forward to welcoming you and to seeing you at an alumni event soon.
WCFA Committee
Claire Wright (Chairman), Christopher Day (Junior Warden), Ellie Hay,
Tim Isaac, Richard Milligan Manby, Keith Thomas, Thomas Wilks,
Hugh Wykes & Duncan Couper (Secretary)