A week in the life of.....

Welcome to our next behind the scenes at AVS, so grab a cuppa and have a read of our latest blog featuring 'A week in the life of Barry Stonham OBE'.

The simplest way of describing my job:  I do what it says on the can – I’m the Treasurer, so I look after the organisation’s funds, which involves invoicing members, partners and customers and receiving their payments (often a rather protracted affair given the Scrooge-like attitude of some academic finance departments!), paying a variety of suppliers, and producing financial forecasts and draft budgets for the board.

I prepare for the week ahead by: I don’t really prepare, unless there’s a board meeting / catch-up scheduled, in which case I will make sure I’ve prepared and forwarded financial reports such as outstanding debtors & creditors, P&L, forecasts. Otherwise my work is driven by updating the accounts from the day’s online bank records, sending out invoices as requested by the Membership Director, or preparing “What-If” scenarios and graphs for the board.

In an average week:  I walk between 40 and 50 miles with my dog, Jenny, who joined me a year ago from Battersea Dog’s Home – in the winter a lot of that walking is on Weymouth’s main beach, which stretches for a good couple of miles from the harbour to Bowleaze Cove, between May and September, as access to the beach if restricted for dogs, it tends to be more around Newton’s Cove (at the bottom of my road), Nothe Fort and Gardens, and the south side of the harbour. I have been the Treasurer of Weymouth RNLI for about 10 months now, so I pop into the Lifeboat Station every day to chat to the volunteer in the shop and to collect and donations that have arrive in the post or, as often happens in the summer, dropped in by hand. I also tend to spend a couple of afternoons there, working on committing over 150 years’ worth of records into a digital archive. This year is the RNLI’s 200th anniversary, so there are a number of big events going on which keep me and the rest of the fundraising team very busy.

Name a challenge in your role: Getting payments from the finance departments of universities and other academic institutions, all of whom have a strict “No Purchase Order, No Payment” regime, but most of whom seem to have forgotten to tell anybody outside the finance department that the rule exists !

Why I love my job: It keeps me off the streets !

I relax out of work by: collecting single malt scotch whisky, drinking white Burgundy and cooking up eye-watering curries