Supporters Direct Conference 2011

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Venue: Queens Hotel, Chester. 15-16 July 2011.

The Brakes Trust sent three delegates to the 2011 Supporters Direct conference: Nick Hallworth, Peter Davis & Paul Sandison. After the welcome speech the room was told about new initiatives in raising funding and club promotion, with the emphasis being that any Trust or club can only function at its best if it can live within its own means and show an operating profit at the end of its financial year, something most football clubs agree with, but, sadly, few have the willpower or fiscal ability to achieve.

The 200 delegates heard about the Trust movement’s successes such as Chester City, FC United of Manchester, AFC Wimbledon, and Exeter City – wholly supporter owned and run clubs, some of which have started from scratch and are progressing nicely up the football pyramid. Swansea City has just attained a premiership place and boasts a 20% Supporters Trust shareholding.

The afternoon sessions were divided into separate seminars the purpose of which was to explain the details of the new initiatives. The Brakes Trust delegates split up and took on one subject each, this proved to be beneficial and what has been learned will be put into practice where it’s applicable to our Trust and club. The conference was bought to a close with an interesting question and answer session with SD representatives and William Gaillard from UEFA.

An interesting, thought provoking and inspirational conference, which was well worth the effort to attend.

The Brakes Trust board needs the help of the Trust membership to bring new fund raising initiatives into play. If you think you have a skill, admin, financial, legal or just the enthusiasm to get stuck in, please talk to any Trust Board member. We are always at games, so if you don’t know what we look like just ask around, some one will. For instance: FC United of Manchester, on an average attendance of 2,000, has just raised a staggering £1.3million on a redeemable share issue scheme, yes you can get your money back, to enable them to build and own their own football ground. That is a huge sum of money and raised by people who are no different than the membership of the Brakes Trust, just imagine what a fraction of that would mean to our club….