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The Supporters Trust are "upping the ante" in order to raise their profile and membership.

Time to get involved if you are not already.....

http://www.torquayheraldexpress.co.uk/T ... story.html

Membership Recruitment Strategy

Following on from the inexcusable decision by the Club Board to cancel the project to explore the viability of community ownership, stating our lack of members (425) as one of their reasons, your Trust Board have made the decision to focus our efforts over the next 8 weeks to recruiting new members.

Please note the Club Board also used our lack of funds as an additional excuse. However, in light of the Clubs much talked about precarious financial situation, we have decided that it would not be appropriate at this stage to launch a major fund raising campaign that would potentially undermine the Clubs fund raising efforts and so have taken the decision to continue not to fund raise for the time being.

On Saturday 27th February a 3 hour meeting was held to discuss and agree a membership recruitment strategy. Below is a short summary.

Strategy

Target - Focus will be Member Recruitment with the aim to at least double the current membership from 425 to enhance TUST’s reputation/credibility with both the current TUFC Board and potential future bidders.

Why - TUST believes that the character of the club ideally fits the trust model as a long term solution.

Despite the best efforts of recent TUFC boards, the club’s long term sustainability will inevitably require community ownership at some point in the future.

In the meantime supporters need a voice with the current TUFC Board, as well as any potential future bidders for the club.

Based on the club’s response about the current levels of TUST membership inhibiting their involvement in a joint exploration of community ownership, TUST will now focus on increasing membership numbers to improve our influence.

In terms of potential TUST projects, while the new stadium is an interesting idea it is unlikely to be implemented for a long time and therefore our focus for any actions will continue to be at Plainmoor.

In the interim private investment will be supported by TUST if it is based on the best long term interests of the club.

TUST’s immediate priority is to begin a marketing/communication strategy to recruit more members in response to the club’s challenge to the TUST Board.

What we will do

A number of actions have been identified and agreed, including the decison that the recruitment campaign will be expanded to include a weekly quarter page 'advertorial' in the Herald Express which will be sponsored by local businesses.

Further to Saturdays meeting a meeting was held on Monday morning with the Herald Express and the objectives and execution of our campaign were agreed.

The Trust Board will hold a review meeting in 6 weeks time to assess the effectiveness of this campaign.

Sponsorship has already been secured for the first three editions... If you or anyone you know would like to sponsor the remaining editions please send me an email - [email protected]

Very interesting latest communication from TUST.

The club is desperate for capital.

James Mathie is the leading authority on clubs raising capital from community share issues. He put together the deal that saw Newport County raise nearly a quarter of a million quid within a few months.

TUST paid his expenses - out of your and my subs - to bring him down to Torquay to explain what could be done and OUR club treats him like shit.

Absolutely disgraceful.

I think Michael has tried to show the patience of a saint but frankly the way the club has behaved would try the patience of a saint.

It is more important than ever that as many as possible join TUST:

http://www.torquaysupporters.co.uk/Join.aspx

Well done Jon for posting the link to join TUST.

It is great that we have managed 3 wins on the bounce and all of a sudden there is some optimism on the pitch which at the end of the day is the only thing we really care about. However, we should not forget matters "off the pitch" which ultimately will define the destiny of our beloved club. A strong Supporters Trust representation is hugely important and I would encourage everyone to join if they haven't already.

Personally, I was disappointed to read these comments at a time such as this, when it would be preferable to all be pulling in the same direction.

It seems that since we have managed to get things right on the pitch, the supporters trust has tried to destablise things off it.
I'm not saying that they shouldn't speak up, but there is a time and a place to do so, and now is not that time, in my opinion.
The end of the season would have been the best time to drag this stuff up.

I understand their concerns, of course, but for the love of all that is good and holy, put aside your grievances for the next couple of months or so, and put all of the effort into supporting the bunch of players on the pitch that are actually showing some fight and guts.

Scott Brehaut wrote:Personally, I was disappointed to read these comments at a time such as this, when it would be preferable to all be pulling in the same direction.

It seems that since we have managed to get things right on the pitch, the supporters trust has tried to destablise things off it.
I'm not saying that they shouldn't speak up, but there is a time and a place to do so, and now is not that time, in my opinion.
The end of the season would have been the best time to drag this stuff up.

I understand their concerns, of course, but for the love of all that is good and holy, put aside your grievances for the next couple of months or so, and put all of the effort into supporting the bunch of players on the pitch that are actually showing some fight and guts.

Completely agree, wounded egos need to be set to one side for the great good of the club. People should be less concerned about getting their way and 'winning' than the club's immediate survival battle.

Interestingly, I'm yet to see a concrete suggestion of how community ownership will stabilise our financial situation in a way that the current board are unable to. Given that they see community ownership as 'inevitable' for the sustainability of the club, one wonders why they haven't actually provided a sound fiscal argument for this yet. I'm not sure how a club with barely any supporters qualifies as 'ideally' fitting the trust model...

madgull wrote: Completely agree, wounded egos need to be set to one side for the great good of the club. People should be less concerned about getting their way and 'winning' than the club's immediate survival battle.

Interestingly, I'm yet to see a concrete suggestion of how community ownership will stabilise our financial situation in a way that the current board are unable to. Given that they see community ownership as 'inevitable' for the sustainability of the club, one wonders why they haven't actually provided a sound fiscal argument for this yet. I'm not sure how a club with barely any supporters qualifies as 'ideally' fitting the trust model...

Presumably part of James Mathie's brief?

tufcjon wrote:Very interesting latest communication from TUST.

The club is desperate for capital.

James Mathie is the leading authority on clubs raising capital from community share issues. He put together the deal that saw Newport County raise nearly a quarter of a million quid within a few months.

TUST paid his expenses - out of your and my subs - to bring him down to Torquay to explain what could be done and OUR club treats him like sh*t.

Absolutely disgraceful.

I think Michael has tried to show the patience of a saint but frankly the way the club has behaved would try the patience of a saint.

It is more important than ever that as many as possible join TUST:

http://www.torquaysupporters.co.uk/Join.aspx

Were you present at the meeting? Do you seriously expect the club to be bending over backwards to an organisation that has £12k in the bank? Stop wasting their time, Kelvin told them to come back when they could raise a million, how far have they got?

I agree with Scott and SG. It's disappointing to read some of those TUST comments. Far from being inexcusable, the Torquay United board's decision was perfectly sensible and reasonable, for the reasons given by the club, and TUST's decision in response not to campaign to raise funds unfortunately comes across as somewhat petulant. It would be quite wrong to assume that fund-raising by TUST would undermine the club's fund-raising efforts. On the contrary, the Club's and TUST's efforts would complement each other. It's good to see TUST is going to try to recruit more members, but until its finances and membership reach significant levels, its practical importance to the future of the club will continue to be minimal. If it wants to achieve the aims we all want for the club, TUST will need to approach both its operational decisions and its relationship with the club and with potential members in a more considered and diplomatic way.

Southampton Gull wrote:
Were you present at the meeting? Do you seriously expect the club to be bending over backwards to an organisation that has £12k in the bank? Stop wasting their time, Kelvin told them to come back when they could raise a million, how far have they got?

The million was absolute" pie in the sky",in reality the club was actually taken over with a promised investment of just over £200k,with about £80k paid back already to disaffected Board members.The club is probably available for even less now and subject to offers from asset strippers and charlatans.Supporters Direct could have provided a realistic appraisal of what a community share offer could raise based on experience of other clubs,and an analysis of the prospects locally for such an issue;as well as the prospect of a Community owned club being sustainable at TUFC given the prevailing financial situation at the club,and after assessing its assets and liabilities etc.Other private speculators are being given the courtesy of such consideration by the club-why not it's own independent supporters' organisation facilitated by Supporters Direct?

I find the clubs lack of respect to circa 20% of its fan base to be pretty shoddy, and just one of the poor decisions this board has made (amongst some good ones).

The fact that Pete masters was in the meeting, someone who is not part of the football club, speaks volumes. The fact he was there has rung major alarm bells to me - he wasn't going to do this from the goodness of his heart, I just hope the board aren't bending over for him without knowing what they are doing.

Kit_robin wrote: I find the clubs lack of respect to circa 20% of its fan base to be pretty shoddy, and just one of the poor decisions this board has made (amongst some good ones).

The fact that Pete masters was in the meeting, someone who is not part of the football club, speaks volumes. The fact he was there has rung major alarm bells to me - he wasn't going to do this from the goodness of his heart, I just hope the board aren't bending over for him without knowing what they are doing.

I imagine they feel something similar towards 75% of the fanbase who are always so quick to criticise them without knowing the facts.


Incidentally, I have nothing but respect for the hard work Michael has and is doing and am as for the goal of community ownership as anyone else, it's just not workable at this moment in time.