Concordia
Merchant Taylors’ School
Development:
MY first two years at Merchant Taylors’
have flown past. It is a great place to
work and I am now getting to know many
OMTs, parents and friends of the school
well. At each event the school holds, there
are an increasing number of faces that
are familiar to me. That said, it is always
fantastic to meet new people – OMTs who
are re-engaging with the school for the
first time since they left, or parents of the
next generation of OMTs.
It has been another successful year
Development
Director’s Update
BY nowmost of you will be aware of
the Net Community and may indeed
already have used it to buy event
tickets or to update us with your
details. For those who haven’t, the Net
Community is an online portal which
gives you the opportunity to link with
the Development Office database. This
may not sound particularly exciting.
However, the database is becoming a
mine of very useful information.
You may wish to catch up with an
old classmate that you haven’t seen
for years. By logging in to the Net
Community you can track down fellow
OMTs and get back in touch. It may
be that you are interested in finding
out about a particular career path you
are considering, or are interested in
a change of career, and would like to
speak to someone in that line of work.
We have a Careers Directory which
contains hundreds of contacts in a
variety of different professions who have
volunteered to be contacted.
The Net Community includes a
calendar of school and OMT events and
where registration or ticket purchasing is
necessary, there is the facility to register
and pay online through a secure portal.
For those unlucky OMTs and parents
who didn’t receive a telephone call in our
campaign over the summer, fear not –
there is the facility to donate securely to
whichever project you wish to support.
Perhaps this issue of Concordia had to
be forwarded to you and you just need to
update your details. While you are doing
so, why not let us know about what you
did while you were at school and what
sorts of things you are interested in now,
so we can make sure we include you in
mailings and event invitations that we
think you might enjoy.
If you haven’t received a username
and password from the Development
Office, get in touch and we can issue
you with one that you can then change
once you have logged in. If you would
rather choose yours from the outset,
simply visit the Net Community at
and
go to ‘new user registration’ and fill in
your details.
My Merchant Taylors:
Your New Online Community
in terms of fundraising. The Telephone
Campaign was an obvious highlight,
raising £100,000 over three years, but
there have been many other wonderful
gifts. The total raised in 2012/13 was in
excess of £250,000. Just as exciting has
been the increase in the sheer number
of supporters we have. When Stephen
Wright, in his speech at last December’s
Benefactors’ Day, announced that he hoped
there would be too many people to fit in
the Head Master’s house in 2013, he may
well have been right. Simon Everson has
been able to thank and invite over 300
benefactors who have contributed to our
Campaign over the course of the year. We
look forward to welcoming many of them
back to Benefactors’ Day in the Great Hall
this year.
It hasn’t all been about fundraising, of
course. We ran a personal information
formmailing during the year, which helped
us gather a huge amount of information
about what our OMTs are doing now, what
they did while they were at MTS and what
sorts of events and publications they would
like to see us produce.
Overwhelmingly our OMTs wanted to
see more networking events, year-group
reunions and informal events. We launched
the City Network in February 2013 – to
be repeated in 2014 – and have plans to
launch an Arts and Creative Industries
event in summer 2014. With the Medical
Group that Caron Evans-Evans and Sid
Datta (OMT 1992 – 1999) have got off the
ground this year, we hope we will have
three groups meeting regularly. Also in
summer 2014 we hope to launch an event
for our recent leavers as well as an annual
year-group reunion event. This will mean
an opportunity for OMTs to attend every
five years.
We are also in the process of launching
our online Net Community. There is more
information about that below. We hope
it will make engaging with the school a
lot easier for OMTs and parents in future.
Online event registration and the Careers
Directory are particularly important
developments.
As the Development Office and the
Old Merchant Taylors’ Society run more
joint activities, our programme of events,
publications, careers and networking
initiatives will expand. There will be more
organised opportunities to return to the
school and to meet fellow OMTs and
parents. If you would ever like to visit
the school for a tour, you are always very
welcome – please do get in touch.
Nick Latham
Development Director
01923 845 545
