We conducted a survey last month, and we published the results on our website (click here). We are now in a position to publish a response to that survey and how we are reacting to it:
| Survey on the work undertaken by the Trust during 2019-20 | Rating |
| Exiles | 8.4 |
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We are delighted with the progress that the Exiles have made in recent years and the numbers of Exiles signing up from all corners of the globe is testament to that. We must pay tribute to our Exiles coordinator Ian Goodwin in playing a massive part in achieving that. The Exiles Away Day has been a popular addition to the Trust Calendar, and we were delighted to see AFC Wimbledon retain their League One status last season so that we can keep this going – hopefully at their brand new stadium if restrictions allow us to. It goes without saying that we were disappointed to lose our Exiles Day at the Crown Oil Arena this season. We have also been sending our Exiles Newsletters this year, and we’d love more Exiles to get involved in these, whether it’s sharing an awayday review or a tale from watching Dale from afar. 150 Exiles last year and we are hoping for more this time with membership down to a fiver. If you live away from Rochdale, please join us.
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| Monthly Newsletters | 8.2 |
We send the newsletters at the start of each month, and we’ve tried to mix it up a little bit with a different Trust Board member writing it each month. The stats from Mailchip suggest that around 60-70% of the emails that are sent out are read. As always, if there is anything you would like to see in the newsletters that we are not doing already, then please email us at info@daletrust.co.uk and we’ll see what we can do
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| Communication with members | 8.0 |
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We see communication as being paramount to everything that we do. After all, we are a members’ organisation and we are here to represent the members and part of that is keeping members informed of what we are up to. Inevitably, there will be times when discussions with the club must remain confidential, but we aim to provide as much information as we can to our members. Not only that, we ensured that every single home game last season had a Trust desk in the Dale Bar where Trust committee members would be on hand to deal with any queries.
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| Welfare | 8.0 |
| We’d planned last season a number of articles and papers on dementia and mental health, but when we got the first rumblings of the Covid 19 situation, we published help lines and NHS guidance when lock down came but our work since has been limited. We will soon be issuing a survey regarding Covid 19 and it’s our intention to follow that with mental health work. The dementia work is scheduled for later in the year, we also will be publishing some simple fact sheets on general health guidance and those should be on line soon.
To all trust members and anyone else who feels they need support, have a need to talk or are worried about anything then ALL of the trusts welfare one to one work is in total confidence, you can contact us either by welfare@daletrust.co.uk or the trusts info@daletrust.co.uk where your initial contact will be passed on to us.
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| Website | 7.8 |
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We have taken on a new volunteer to support with all things ICT based and beyond, and we’ve got further interest from a couple more to ensure that we have a wide range of volunteers amongst the Trust committee who are capable of maintaining the Trust website and our Social Media channels . We would ask that if any Trust member sees something on another club’s website that you think would improve ours, then please contact us at info@daletrust.co.uk.
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| Meetings with the Board | 7.6 |
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From our perspective, we regularly leave the meetings feeling that the club have been very open and transparent with us, but we are aware from comments that this does not always come across in the report that we publish. Criticism over this is fair and accepted and we are looking to be address this in future reports. If we are not getting the message across, then that’s a failing on our part and it is something we have to do better on. What we have decided on already is to make the minutes that we take from the meeting a little more formal with an action plan at the end of each one. This is something that we have already put into action in the report from 21st July, and we are keen to repeat this with all future meetings.
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| Social Events | 7.5 |
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We feel that it wasn’t a great year to judge the social events that the Trust ran due to the Covid-19. Our flagship event was all set for May in which we were inviting Gary Jones and Nathan Stanton for what would have been a tenth anniversary of the 2009-10 promotion season, and we were really confident that it would have been a fantastic night. We have found that Social Events tend to work better as part of a fundraising campaign, and we didn’t have anything specific to fundraise for last year.
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| Friends of the Trust | 7.3 |
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We have started working on increasing the number of Friends that we have added. We have added one more since the survey was launched and we are in negotiation with a couple more potential Friends. We are also looking at ways in which we can boost the profile of the Friends and give a complete list of all of the offers that are available and up to date, as no one would expect Trust members to trawl through the website to find an offer that suits. As always, if you are in a position where you can offer a service at a discount to Trust members, then please contact us at friends@daletrust.co.uk.
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We also gave a range of options to Trust members as to what they felt should be our priority for the 2020-21 season:
| Priorities for the Trust | Votes |
| More work attracting families to Spotland | 74 |
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So far, we have researched the work that is taking place at our clubs that the EFL have designated as being Family Clubs of the Year in the past couple of years to see what good practice we learn from them. We have followed this up with a survey of Dale families to find out what would attract families to Spotland and what would put them off. The results of this will be published in full on the Trust website following its conclusion, and we will be meeting the club to discuss the findings to see how the experience of visiting the Crown Oil Arena can be improved.
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| Increasing our shareholding in the club | 66 |
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This is a bit of a quandary for us. As things stand, we have around 12,500 shares in the club which works out at around 2.6% of all the shares. At this moment in time, it would cost us a significant amount of money to increase this shareholding and the question is whether such a purchase would benefit the Trust. This is something we need to look into in greater detail and consult with Trust members for the direction they want us to take.
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| More consultation with supporters | 63 |
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This is already something we are passionately committed to running throughout the season and beyond. We have launched one survey already this week regarding attracting families to the Crown Oil Arena, and the feedback we receive is invaluable providing much more evidence when speaking to the club than it would be to recount half a dozen emails or conversations with supporters. It is our intention to run a survey every single month and to publish the results in full, along with a plan of action following the findings. After all, surveys for the sake of surveys don’t achieve anything.
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| Increasing the size of the Trust membership | 60 |
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Well if this was a priority, we’re well on our way to achieving it. The reduction of Trust membership from £10 to £5 has seen a big increase in Trust members. At time of writing this, we have 473 members which is our 7th highest total, and we don’t even when the season will start. The pressure will be on the Trust to ensure that all those who have signed up for this season is impressed by the work that the Trust carries out and joins again next Summer.
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| Improving the feedback from our meetings with the club | 54 |
| See above | |
| More work with junior Dale supporters | 46 |
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We are conscious that whilst we have a number of Junior members, we don’t do anything for them whatsoever. We are currently looking into the possibility of adding a specific person to the Trust committee to take responsibility for Junior members.
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| Increasing our fundraising for the club | 45 |
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At this moment in time, we have no specific fundraising project and haven’t had since we contributed towards the new 5-a-side pitch at the back of the Pearl Street Stand. As always, any fundraising project over £3,000 would require the approval of the Trust members before doing so – something unique throughout the whole of the Supporters’ Trusts movement to the best of our knowledge.
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| Improving our presence on social media | 37 |
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We’ve promised this for a while without really delivering. Whilst we’re proud of the improvements that we’ve had with the Trust website in the past couple of years, we haven’t had the level of improvements with our Facebook and Twitter accounts. We are aware for many supporters, these represent the best way of finding out what we are up to.
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