Hello and welcome to ISSBA’s September newsletter! We are now officially in autumn but the weather has still been glorious! I hope you’ve all enjoyed the summer break.
We are excited to see lots of you at our September networking event which will be held at Regus Franciscan House on 27th September. Book your place here.
Make sure you’ve also booked your place for Anglia Business Spotlight on 25th October at University of Suffolk. We will be announcing the lucky members with places our interview panel shortly! It promises to be an interesting, fun evening with lots of time for networking as well.
If you are an ISSBA member, remember that you can advertise your events on our events calendar either via the dashboard page when you login or by emailing the details to mail@issba.co.uk. Keep an eye on the calendar for upcoming events.
Stand bookings for Anglia Business Exhibition 2024 are now open! ABE2024 takes place on 8th May at Trinity Park next year. Visit https://www.angliabusinessexhibition.com/abeevent/floorplan/1/1 to book your stand or if you are interested in becoming an ABE2024 sponsor, get in touch now on contact@angliabusinessexhibition.com. Read our ABE2024 update here.
Member of the Month for September is Groundwork East who explain about their work in helping businesses to reach net zero.
Our business focus piece this month is titled ‘The first 20 years’ and was written by Emma Felgate from Emma’s Florist. Emma tells us about her journey to reaching the 20th anniversary of this popular local business.
Would you be interested in joining the ISSBA committee? If so, let us know on mail@issba.co.uk. We are a friendly bunch and usually meet once per month (via Zoom currently). As well as having a say in how the organisation is run, this is a fantastic opportunity to build your profile in the local area. Get in touch if you’d like to know more.
Don’t forget our Recommend a Friend scheme, it is great to see ISSBA members benefiting from this. Any current ISSBA member will get one month's free membership for each new member they recommend, plus the new member also gets one free month, so Win-Win! There are no limits to how many referrals each ISSBA member can make as long as you have a current, paid up membership, so if you bring in 12 new members, you'll get a whole year for free!
GoCardless is making the renewal process much easier for many of our members. If you haven’t signed up yet, either let us know on mail@issba.co.uk or keep an eye on your inbox for an authorisation request. GoCardless is a direct debit system fully protected by the Direct Debit Guarantee and means that you never need to worry about forgetting to renew again. By signing up to this you will help your committee save valuable time in chasing renewals, so please, if you aren’t already signed up, please do!
Graham Barton, ISSBA Chair