2025 AGM Minutes
05 March 2026
- Welcome & Apologies
Tilanie forgot to officially welcome everyone and went straight into her Chairlady’s Report. Once complete Nicci welcomed everyone to the AGM on Tilanie’s behalf and thanked them for their time. We had a total of 21 ladies’ booked to attend of which 20 were members and 1 was a non-members. 17 members were in attendance on the morning. Formal apologies were sent by Ayanda Mboto, Fiona Furniss and Katia Papadopoulos.
- Notice of meeting
Notice was given verbally at our February meeting and written notice was given to our whole database via Mailerlite on the 27 February. A link to the 2024 AGM Minutes along with the 2025 AGM Agenda were sent to all ladies booked to attend the AGM on 3 March 2026 by the administrator, Nicci Hosking.
- Approval of previous minutes
Nicci asked if everyone had received and read the minutes from our 2024 AGM. The 2024 minutes were approved by all in attendance. Proposer: Tanya Fleischer. Seconded by: Emma Dunk.
- 2025 Chairman Report
Tilanie began by expressing what an honour it has been to lead her committee and the members during the special 2025 year, which was KZN Women in Business’s milestone 30th birthday.
Meetings
Meetings continued to be held at the Hellenic Hall and we were grateful to Jenny and Eric for their professionalism, willingness to help and for the great food.
We saw a steady rise in attendance each month of members but also hosted many visitors each month.
Once again we had one of our meetings held in the format of a panel discussion with exceptional professionals talking around the subject of how hormones affect us showing up in the workplace. This meeting was very well attended and received. We also had another meeting where we used the “knowledge in the room” inviting our own members to share their vision around ending 2025 strong and stepping into 2026.
We held our 30th anniversary celebration at the Elephant and Co in Westville with a fantastic turnout. It was incredible to see so many of our long-standing members, past members and new faces joining us for a night of celebrating this amazing organization. Keri and Fiona from PLAY ZN hosted the evening for us and we played games and handed out spot-prizes.
In October, our birthday month, KZNWIB was the gift sponsor and we provided each member with a beautiful cupcake in celebration of this milestone. We played a nostalgic video, showcasing all our past chairladies as well as showing a rolling collage of moments and people from the last 30 years.
We would like to thank all the gift sponsors for 2025, for spoiling us with beautiful table gifts.
As we had our celebration in October we ended off the year with a different more relaxed speed-networking event in December, which was great fun and well-received by everyone who attended. It was a fantastic way to end off the year.
Membership info 2022 – 2025
Must be noted that membership numbers are a reflection of paid up memberships, and not simply the amount of ladies on our database. We are happy to report that membership numbers are up from 2024.
- December 2022 – 90
- December 2023 – 76
- December 2024 – 70
- December 2025 – 75
Meeting attendance 2022– 2025
Unfortunately meeting attendance was down from 2024.
| Meeting Attendance | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov |
| 2022 | 68 | 51 | 57 | 67 | 62 | 72 | 65 | 73 | 75 | 67 |
| 2023 | 65 | 74 | 70 | 53 | 66 | 70 | 71 | 51 | 43 | 59 |
| 2024 | 73 | 87 | 71 | 57 | 63 | 80 | 57 | 58 | 60 | 82 |
| 2025 | 60 | 55 | 52 | 46 | 55 | 66 | 70 | 62 | 62 | 60 |
Meeting and Membership Pricing
Membership fees were increased for 2025:
Individual Membership fees
Primary membership R 750,00 for 12 months. R 650,00 for renewal (VAT N/A)
Secondary membership R 685,00 for 12 months. R 585,00 for renewal (VAT N/A)
Bronze Corporate Membership
R 1500,00 for 12 months. R 1400,00 for renewal (VAT N/A)
Silver Corporate Membership
R 2750,00 for 12 months. R 2650,00 for renewal (VAT N/A)
Gold Corporate Membership
R 3750,00 for 12 months. R 3650,00 for renewal (VAT N/A)
Monthly meeting prices stayed the same for members at R250 but was increased to R395 for visitors.
Workshop prices stayed the same at R200 for members and R300 for non-members
Workshops
2025 saw us starting with Workshops again and we ran THREE very successful workshops:
March – low-cost marketing strategies with Emma Dunk
June – Making the most of AI with Natasha Lee and Lauren Lister
August – Social Media Analytics – Ann Druce
Thank you to the ladies that stepped up and shared their knowledge
Coffee Connect and Cocktail Connect Events
We continued during 2025 with our very popular and well-attended coffee and cocktail connect events and introduced this concept to the Ballito community through our committee member Benni Thompson. Feedback has been very positive.
We had two special coffee connect events during our birthday month, where we spend time connecting with horses and we did a walk and talk towards the Umhlanga Lagoon.
We also held a combined cocktail evening with members from our sister organisation UWA at Harry James.
Administrative Support
A heart-felt thank you to Nicci Hosking for the amazing work she does as administrator and as support to the rest of the committee. We appreciate you.
Charity
Our charity was The Baby Home in Durban North. We want to thank Jo Teunissen for sharing incredibly emotional, funny and uplifting stories and videos with us each month of the precious babies in her care and the stories surrounding them. Some members also attended their big charity ball, held right here at the Hellenic. We were truly honoured to support them in this way as well. We were able to hand over a cheque of R26,511.92 at the December meeting. Our members also generously supported the charity each month by bringing items from their wish list.
As per our constitution, charities were nominated, followed by member voting, with the elected charity for 2026 being the YES Trust.
Sponsorship
We were honoured to have the first 6 months of our year sponsored by Marriott Investments and we thank them for their time and sharing their expertise during each meeting. We also received beautiful journals from them. Our members enjoyed learning more about investment options.
Unfortunately we could not secure a sponsor for the second half of the year and introduced monthly sponsorship opportunities. We thank Peach Olive from Fresh Eyes, Tilanie Grote from Tilanie Grote Photography and Cindy Norcott from Pro Talent who took one of these slots available.
Permanent sponsorship has become harder the last 2 years and as of the end of 2025 we did not secure a sponsor for 2026.
Committee
No changes were made to the existing committee. I want to take the opportunity to thank each and every committee member for their hard work and dedication to this organization during their tenure.
30 Years Celebration
We had a fabulous birthday celebration in October, with a dinner at Elephant and Co in the Pavillion with Keri and Fiona from PLAYZN as MC’s. We had 80 ladies in attending and had a wonderful celebration.
Media Coverage
During 2025 we appeared in 49 printed and 9 on-line publications:
Print total: R1 593 911.27 Online total: R187 900.00 Total value of free media coverage received: R1 781 811.27
Other
The Proposed amendment to the constitution regarding the wording of the bank accounts done was discussed in the special AGM held on the on the 8th of May and approved.
- General
Proposed amendment in the constitution
10.8. For the purposes of donating proceeds to the nominated charity, all monies in the FNB Gold Business Account and in the form of cash will be tallied after the November meeting and before the December function annually, after all expenses for November have been deducted.
Income to be retained annually (not to be included in the Charity total) includes the following:
- Cost of up to 2 meetings, including cost of 1 seat for Sponsor and 1 seat for Charity.
- 3 months salary for Administrator
- Any miscellaneous costs
- 1 month’s fixed costs to cover any additional services required or used by the organisation.
- Money in the FNB 32 Day Flexi Notice account that serves as an emergency fund
All other monies in the form of cash and in the FNB Gold Business Account shall be paid to the nominated charity by the 31st December of that year.
The final amount to be paid to the Charity must be approved by the Committee.
The committee is authorized to withdraw funds from the FNB 32 Day Flexi Notice account with the approval of three committee members.
- Treasurer Report
Roxann Govender from Precision Business Services presented our Annual Financial Statement for the year January – December 2025. Sharon Emmerich verbally requested to see the financials. It was advised that should any other attendees wish to request a copy of the financials to view, they must please send their request in writing to the organisation by emailing [email protected]
- General
Chrystal Austin questioned the Sponsorship request increase, as did Senta Seele. Both commented that the price has increased but questioned if the value of benefits to the sponsor increased as well. They raised concerns about not appealing to Corporates. Sue St Leger suggested we send a poll/survey to determine how our ‘value’ is perceived and how to improve it in order to secure Corporate sponsorship. Sharon Emmerich suggested we approach Investec to introduce an ESG programme. Emma Dunk advised that we had contacted Investec but they did not want to sponsor. Tilanie looked to the new chairlady Benni Thompson for guidance on the way forward to which Benni explained how hard the new committee has already been working behind the scenes to drive new projects, secure sponsorship and that at present we do have a few potential sponsors lined up. Benni believes women want to feel heard, seen and feel safe and that we will get there. Laiela Dorasamy also mentioned that our aim is to rather move away from traditional sponsorship and move towards partnerships with corporates. Sue St Leger complimented Benni on the improvements she has already seen since becoming the new Chairlady which included more diversity along with increased number of attendees at our monthly meetings. Sue Vermeer explained how popular our Coffee Connects are and believes this is another great avenue to growing our organisation. Loretta Wilmot agreed with Sue Vermeer further stating that we need to target and meet with ladies to connect and make an impression.
- Vote of thanks and Closure
Tilanie concluded the meeting by thanking the ladies for attending our Annual General Meeting with the closure time being 11:42 am verbally noted by Nicci Hosking. Thank you so much to you all for attending our AGM.
Many thanks and Kind Regards,
| Tilanie Grote (Chairperson 2024-2025) | Tanya Fleischer (Vice-chair 2024-2025) |
