The Trust Committee met on Wednesday night. Here’s a brief review of that meeting:
Discussions continued about the forthcoming AGM. Following a vote on the Trust website, it has been decided to host the AGM on Saturday 13th October at 11:30 in the Dale Bar. The venue has been booked, and we would look to see if refreshments can be put on for those in attendance.
This week the membership has beaten last year’s total. The latest update on members took us to 436 members beating last year’s total. The ambition is for us to hit 500 members by Xmas. Inspection of the figures show that 376 of the members have renewed for this season, with 60 new members. We even had the first ever member signing up using the Trust beermat. Further efforts will be made to contact lapsed members to encourage them to sign up.
The Goldbond for Exiles scheme has been launched with seven exiles signing up for it so far. It’s still a fledgling scheme, but we hope that it will continue to rise raising revenue for the Football Club and hopefully seeing a few winners amongst the Trust Exile membership.
Planning carried on about a future Fundraising project. A meeting was taking place at the club on Thursday 6th September, and following that, it’s hoped an initial announcement can be made. The fundraising will only take place with the backing of members and plans are already in place to ensure that is the case.
The recent Kiosks survey was discussed, along with the statement put out by the club in response to the findings. Further work will look at this as we continue to address the findings of this report. Furthermore, a second survey is nearly completed and will be announced soon as the Trust continues to work with the club for the benefit of all concerned.
The forthcoming Former Players Day was discussed and we may need to look at a later date than the one initially discussed. A plan is currently being looked at for the day. A number of players have already been contacted, with many more to be contacted. There is a real positive feeling about the plans in place and we’re looking at launching a subcommittee to specifically look at the FPA.
We have started writing to opposition Supporters’ Trusts in advance of games at Spotland and inviting them and their members to the Ratcliffe Suite before matches. We’ve yet to hear any response from this which is somewhat disappointing but we will continue to do this.
A great deal work has taken place regarding the Friends of the Trust. We have so far brought on board fifteen different local companies with a view to several more joining in the next few weeks. The plan is to attract local companies that will offer a discount to our members upon production of their membership card to add value to the £10 Trust membership fee. A full list of the Friends can be found here.
Trust Committee member Keith Hicks spoke about the recent work that taken place from the Dale Community Trust with the recent soccer skills. There were 395 young people taking part in the soccer skills this Summer, which was an increase of eighty from the year before. Siobhan McElihenny spoke about the pride that the Academy had following Tuesday’s game with Bury and Luke Matheson’s appearance at just fifteen years old. Daniel Adshead was cited as another academy success having been part of things at Spotland for nine years.
There was good feedback from the recent matchball sponsorship vs Walsall. Tommy Lee had offered his apologies for not being able to attend but is very keen to attend a similar event in the future. A guest has been signed up for our next Matchball sponsorship in November when we host Accrington. A decision on the guest for the sponsorship vs Scunthorpe will be made nearer the time.
Fourteen tickets have been sold for the Exiles Away Day at Wimbledon. The deadline will be the end of October for any Exiles wanting to get involved. If the worst comes to the worst, we can open it up to the full membership but this is primarily an Exiles event with priority for Exile members.
Work has already started on next year’s Curry Night. Given the large number of people who tried to get tickets but were unable to last year, we are looking into the possibility of a bigger venue. We hope to have a venue in place by the time of our next meeting in October.
Our coasters / beermats have gone down very well and a number of establishments have been asking about getting more in. We are looking into whether we can justify ordering more.
With extra members on the Trust committee, we are looking into specific roles for members. A meeting is taking place next week where this is being looked into. We spoke about the excellent work that Doncaster do in welcoming supporters to their ground and acting as liaison in doing so on opposition team’s online forums and whether this could be something that we could look at.
The next meeting will take place on Thursday 11th October.