committee2

Committee Meeting

Date & Time: Sunday 4^th December 10:00am

Attendees: Lee Dolby, Kevin Gibson, Andy Musgrave, Caroline Musgrave,  Stephen Petty, Stephen Lock, June Lock, Bob Potts, Harry Tidbury, John Middleton

Location: Durham WFC, Maiden Castle

Meeting Purpose

• Committee Meeting

Meeting Minutes

To begin the meeting, we confirmed that all members present had time to confirm they all are happy to be Committee members.
There are 2 items on the agenda for today, fundraising and membership followed by anything other business

FUNDRAISING
HOW
We discussed the one event we have planned for fundraising and costs for tickets for night out as the cost to host would be £250
The Event will be 24th Feb at Bede Lodge Social Club
Tickets have been confirmed to be sold at £3
We will also be raising funds by selling raffle and bingo tickets
Posters will be produced to advertise the event
We may be eligible for an Arts Grant
We are looking for donations for the raffle we will be holding at the event.
Suggestions for other projects requiring funding were commentary for all away games.
For this we would need to work out the cost to fund a person to provide commentary, the cost for travel for the person, fuels etc, and accommodation if applicable.
The commentary would be available for members only via a login, and an option to donate during the commentary would be available, this would be optional.
Other suggestions to generate funds were football cards, quiz night – entry fee ? prizes ? online ? – Could we get members of the club to form a team to be involved
An evening with… manager, players, others – who could we get, who do people want ? – Could this be available online ? – members would be able to submit questions – entry fee ?

FOR WHAT
We briefly mentioned what we would be fundraising for and confirmed that we would be looking for items that would benefit our own fans and members.
It was decided that we should raise money for flags of different sizes and ideally a flag for centre circle.
We could we get local businesses to sponsor the flags with possible advertising on bottom – “flags supplied by…”
We also discussed if we should look at mascots for home games and if any costs would be involved,

MEMBERSHIP
We needed to discuss how to provide membership cards as physical cards would require an outlay but would be better, or whether initially we would provide virtual membership cards (print your own).
We agreed that the yearly membership would run season to season not year to year.
We agreed the split for membership would be under 5 free, 5-16 child, 17+ adult

FEES
Fees were discussed – could we do a monthly subscription of adults £2 per month and children £1 per month.
It was decided to do a full payment only due to complications of year to year subscription.
Fees were discussed adults £30 – family deals ? and children – £15 – with pen and book however due to requiring outlay for pen and book we decided against this for now as we need to raise funds and not spend what we dont have currently
It was decided that membership fees should be Adult – £20 one off payment and Kids – £10 one of payment meaning less than £2 and £1 per month

BENEFITS
Different roles were discussed to provide opportunity to child members and feasibility would be discussed during further meetings, such as mascots, ball girls/boys, flag bearer, ball bearer
Ideas were submitted for items and opportunities to be able to provide members, suggested were an open day, bouncy castle type things for example, availability of players, show round locations, dressing rooms etc, an open training session, birthday cards / Christmas cards.
The main item we identified was travel discounts which will probably be from next season but can start to gauge interest now
We discussed what we could provide in the membership for adults we thought discounted travel to away games would be beneficial
This would be paid in advance and consist of travel from maiden castle to away games and return only.
We would need to gauge interest first to give an idea of size of transport required.
We know the club contract is with MD Coaches and not sure if we could benefit from discounted rates – to be discussed with both the Club and contractor
All paying members will have a vote in the supporters player of the season – a trophy will be presented to the player with the most votes.

A.O.B
ADMIN
We agreed that we needed to set up a Bank Account as soon as possible as we need somewhere to hold our funds. It was agreed that we should have 2 committee members allowed to retrieve funds and sign on behalf of the Supporters Club.
Lee will be responsible for setting up the following – Website, Domain, Email, Logo, Bank Account
We also discussed electronic methods of being able to receive payments, subscriptions, and donations such as PayPal.
This should be explored to see which is most popular for our members and which would result in maximum funds being retained as all companies take a percentage.
We also discussed various systems for managing e-ticketing, subscriptions, and would speak to Mark Donnelley to see what systems they use and where they get their printing from
Lee to find out anniversary date of formation of the club for yearly event plus Christmas, end of season event possibly as same venue as February’s event.

ADVERTISING THE SUPPORTERS CLUB
Once everything is in place, we will have space in the match day programme for anything regarding the Supporters Club – Mark Donnelley has advised.
Discussions took place about creating a flyer to inform fans of membership prices.
Once structure and admin set up we plan to have flyers in the next home programme if not details in the actual programme itself.
John Middleton also mentioned that we could utilize his column to publicize anything Supporters Club related if required, and we can have mentions in the Podcast he produces as well.

MISC
We would like to be able to contribute fundraising to donate to charity in the future.
It was suggested for purchases in the future that we could offer an option to round up to the nearest pound etc to go to charity.
Harry agreed to investigate the cost for a gambling licence so we could run games of chance rather than games of skill.
Do we need to be a registered charity ?
Is there any benefit to the Supporters Club or members, the Football Club or Community ?
The next meeting was set for January 11th 2023 at 7:00pm.
The meeting was closed at 11:10am.