An update from our CEO

Hello everyone,

Wow! What an incredibly busy summer we have had over the past few months. This summer has been packed with fundraising and awareness raising events across the country including Tavs XI cricket matches, golf days, lunches, dinners and many, many other social activities, a huge number of which were brilliantly organised and delivered by our amazing regional committees. A big, big thanks to everyone who committed time and energy to making these a success.

We’ve had a brilliant programme of events that our 75th anniversary committee planned and delivered alongside the charity’s events team. As ever we are extremely thankful to long-standing Taverner David Robinson and the numerous members of the 75^th anniversary committee that David chairs for the mammoth efforts to plan and deliver a range of celebrations in this big milestone year. My personal favourites were the afternoon spent with the amazing Sir Stephen Fry and all of our guests at Lord’s in late July as well as watching the Taverners XI play at Arundel Castle, the HAC and many other great cricketing venues around the country, as well as new events like when we joined forces with Taverners and cricket podcasters Adam Collins and Toby Tarrant for a great day of cricket and fun at the majestic Wormsley… What a great big summer of fun, that so many members, supporters and friends of the charity have had, celebrating 75 years of impactful work with young people.

Speaking of young people, this summer also saw a huge amount of programme activity take place, with hundreds of participants leaving their homes and communities to travel to our cricket programme residentials across the country. Young people stepped out of their comfort zones and took on the challenges of attending enriching, engaging and impactful weeks away where they made friends, learned new skills and overcame personal challenges whilst having lots of fun at wonderful venues like Avon Tyrell in the New Forest, Arundel Castle, Repton School, Malvern College, Millfield School and Ampleforth College – a huge thanks and well done to the charity’s programmes team, our brilliant Development Officers, so many other people from across the staff team and more who volunteered to make all this possible.  

Looking ahead, this coming month we have a number of events and activities coming up. I am particularly looking forward to our Super 1s awards evening at the Oval, where we will be inspired by the personal stories of so many young people living with a disability who achieve so much through their participation on our programmes. Look out for the photos and news of that event on our social media channels, website and in next month’s newsletter. We also have the fabulous Long Room concert at Lord’s this coming month where the brilliant Alexander Armstrong will entertain our guests, as well as numerous other events and activities across the country organised by the regional committees.

Finally, this September also sees the end of 3-4 years of what we’ve called our transformational strategy. When I joined this organisation in September 2021 I was given the brief by the Trustee board to lead the charity out of the devastating impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and into a new forward-looking era, developing all aspects of the charity with the aim to ensure we are robust, effective and ready to be even more impactful for young people for many years ahead. Over the last 3-4 years so many people have played a range of roles as the charity has undertaken a huge programme of change, modernisation and increased our focus on ensuring our cricket programmes are as far reaching and impactful as possible. The headlines are that we have increased our fundraising income from c£3.7m to over £5.5m annually, which has in turn enabled us to grow our reach from c8,000 young people each year to around 30,000.

A full, more detailed reflection on how the strategy cycle has gone will go to our Trustee board in November and will be shared with all of our members and stakeholders in due course, including at the next AGM. But now, it’s time to keep looking forward and to focus on the next stage in the Lord’s Taverners long journey and the five years that take us to our 80^th year and beyond!

I am pleased to say that at the end of September Trustee board meeting we agreed a new five-year strategy that will commence from the start of 2026 and will be shared with all of our members, supporters and friends of the charity ahead of January. Building on the work of the last 3-4 years, our five-year strategy will focus even more on developing and improving our reach and impact with young people. The strategy will have our core values of We Include, We Empower and We Inspire at the heart of all that we do. We will continue to improve and develop the way the charity operates, and how we engage, steward and compel people and organisations who enable us to achieve our ambitions to be part of the Taverners community. This particularly refers to our members and supporters who play such a pivotal role in making the Lord’s Taverners the successful charity that it is for tens of thousands of young people across the UK each and every year.

Many thanks to everyone who continues to make this the most incredible charity that I have the honour and privilege of being a part of.

Regards,
Mark