Villageman Posted February 28 Report Share Posted February 28 Just as an aside. Interesting to see the Hibs Investment. Foley invests £6m, gets 25% share, Gordon family was 67% now 60%. Assume Fans share was 17.5% now I guess 15%. This kind a deal I cold live with if the WS Board is unsuccessful. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joewarkfanclub Posted February 28 Report Share Posted February 28 7 minutes ago, Villageman said: Just as an aside. Interesting to see the Hibs Investment. Foley invests £6m, gets 25% share, Gordon family was 67% now 60%. Assume Fans share was 17.5% now I guess 15%. This kind a deal I cold live with if the WS Board is unsuccessful. Absolutely this. There seems to be the view that we have to give up majority shareholding to secure any investment. This shows it is possible to maintain WS Ownership and get business partners on board. Lets not sell the family jewels too cheaply. By all accounts the numbers veing offered by our 2 lead investors are nowhere near what Hibs have secured. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kmcalpin Posted March 1 Author Report Share Posted March 1 On 2/28/2024 at 7:59 PM, Speedie85 said: Thought I would pop on to share my view on the discussion around membership numbers and contributions. I think what @Villageman is referring to above is that whilst communications of The Well Society will focus primarily on the overall number of members which now total 3,800. That only tells part of the story. 700 of those members are under 16 and signed up to a Junior Steel membership with a breakeven annual fee 1,500 of those are adults who are regularly contributing at an average rate of £10 per month 1,600 of those are adults who are no longer contributing monthly I think the concern then lies that in order to fill the £750,000 operating blackhole outlined at the AGM last week. The requirement would be that the 1,500 contributing members would need to up their contributions to an average value of £40 per month. i think we all know that this will not be possible but I am not so certain that is the requirement...............Going back to The Well Society membership. There is far more we can do around encouraging the 1,600 members who are not contributing regularly to set up a direct debit. We will also want to ask the question to those already contributing to increase their monthly amount where they can. I have been heartened to see a number of you actively considering this. I would note that any increase in subscriptions by our members must be met by The Well Society board upping the standard of our communications, the level of transparency and the value which our members feel of being part of the Society. We have been actively working on this since the turn of the year. I would encourage members to join us either at the face-to-face events and fundraising session on Thursday night or throughout the day this coming Sunday where we are hosting Zoom sessions where we will share our new operating model and deliverables. This is before we even get to the large number of season ticket holders who are not Society members, those who live locally who have a soft spot for the club but we haven't asked the question of joining the Society and the opportunities we have to grow our membership base internationally. First of all welcome. Great first post. I've been banging on about this very issue for several years now and whatever strategy the Society adopts, increasing member income is a must. When the Society was first launched in 2011 there were several ways in which members could pay to attain certain levels of membership such as Steel, Amber etc. Many such as myself paid in lump sums and we thought thats it. Others began to pay in modest monthly amounts. The marketing strategy was never updated and some members, like me, stopped paying and others fell by the wayside for several reasons. Payment/membership methods just evolved without any systematic or methodical approach or publicity. By default, monthly subscriptions became the norm. We were never really informed about this change or encouraged to set up monthly DDs. This has improved, a bit, of late I have to say. What is required now is to completely relaunch the subscription options and publicise them to all and sundry. Contact all memebrs, so that we all know. What about junior members who have now become adults? Season ticket holders who are not members? Good point. Some are inherently opposed to the Society and will not change; thats life. Some were extremely cautious and suspicious at the outset and thought they'd lose their hard earned money to a seemingly hare brained scheme. Thats the 2 reasons I know about. In addition, there will be a host of other reasons. Some research might not go amiss here - brief interviews on match days? Much work needs to be done to increase membership subscriptions. A starting point will be to update all records, although thats easier said than done. Although important, member subscriptions will not be sufficient to raise necessary funds. What about connecting to local businesses? There are bound to be many self employed members or owners of small businesses. What about advertising their services? Providing that they were competitive pricewise, I'm sure members would rather give their custom to other Well fans would they not? Just a few thoughts from a rank and file perspective. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dennyc Posted March 1 Report Share Posted March 1 12 hours ago, Kmcalpin said: There are bound to be many self employed members or owners of small businesses. What about advertising their services? Providing that they were competitive pricewise, I'm sure members would rather give their custom to other Well fans would they not? 12 hours ago, Kmcalpin said: A starting point will be to update all records, although thats easier said than done. When the Society was launched there was a membership option specifically aimed at Businesses. In fact, at the presentations which took place much was made of that option. Not sure if that still exists or if any Business actually signed up. I think it offered several business related benefits? Also not sure to what extent it was promoted way back then, but it is something worth pursuing. Re the records, did the Society not employ someone for that specific task several years ago? Or is that another task that fell by the wayside? I believe were paying a wage for a time to a guy who eventually packed it in? On a more general point, I don't think it reflects well that basic membership levels are the only indicator that the Society Board appear (or appeared) happy to openly share. Hopefully the planned online forums are a sign of a more open approach. Jay and a few others in the know do seem to have taken that on board. So no offence meant to them. Folk need to know the full picture if they are to part with hard earned cash. Having now disclosed that just 1500 (38%) of 3800 members actively subscribe, it is clear the enormity of the task that lies ahead if the Society are to provide the back up funds required to cover the Club's potential shortfall should performances targets/players sales not be achieved annually. And due to inflation, increasing Stadium costs etc, that potential shortfall will almost certainly increase. A 400% uplift in contributions from those 1500 members seems pretty unrealistic to me. I guess, as a positive, those non paying members and local Businesses do provide opportunities for growth. But Membership needs to rise substantially, and quickly. I really hope I am wrong, and not to downplay the efforts being made by Jay and others as they are much appreciated, but at the end of the day I think we will end up with two realistic options. Accept the external investment that may be offered if satisfactory terms that protect Club Assets can be negotiated, or accept that we need to find a level at which Motherwell FC can function within their income level. One option will likely surrender fan ownership. Setting aside the rights and wrongs of the look, I think we can now see why the Club Board felt it necessary to issue that video. The forthcoming Board changes also suggest all is not good. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kmcalpin Posted March 1 Author Report Share Posted March 1 1 hour ago, dennyc said: Folk need to know the full picture if they are to part with hard earned cash. Having now disclosed that just 1500 (38%) of 3800 members actively subscribe, it is clear the enormity of the task that lies ahead if the Society are to provide the back up funds required to cover the Club's potential shortfall should performances targets/players sales not be achieved annually. And due to inflation, increasing Stadium costs etc, that potential shortfall will almost certainly increase. A 400% uplift in contributions from those 1500 members seems pretty unrealistic to me. I guess, as a positive, those non paying members and local Businesses do provide opportunities for growth. But Membership needs to rise substantially, and quickly. I really hope I am wrong, and not to downplay the efforts being made by Jay and others as they are much appreciated, but at the end of the day I think we will end up with two realistic options. Accept the external investment that may be offered if satisfactory terms that protect Club Assets can be negotiated, or accept that we need to find a level at which Motherwell FC can function within their income level. One option will likely surrender fan ownership. Setting aside the rights and wrongs of the look, I think we can now see why the Club Board felt it necessary to issue that video. The forthcoming Board changes also suggest all is not good. Fair points Denny. Remember though that over 1,000 members were not eligible to vote, being juniors presumably. First priority I'd argue is to check and update membership records; do so very publicly and announce th results to members. I'm sufficiently sceptical of the results to think there could be some, I don't know how many, errors in the database. Maybe the Society could broadcast far and wide for members who did not receive any voting communication to contact them PDQ. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dennyc Posted March 1 Report Share Posted March 1 2 minutes ago, Kmcalpin said: Fair points Denny. Remember though that over 1,000 members were not eligible to vote, being juniors presumably. First priority I'd argue is to check and update membership records; do so very publicly and announce th results to members. I'm sufficiently sceptical of the results to think there could be some, I don't know how many, errors in the database. Maybe the Society could broadcast far and wide for members who did not receive any voting communication to contact them PDQ. Fair comment. Some decent suggestions. I am certain the record thing will now be a priority. Including monitoring when Junior Members reach full membership age so their membership can be upgraded with subscriptions and voting rights altered. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kmcalpin Posted March 1 Author Report Share Posted March 1 2 hours ago, dennyc said: When the Society was launched there was a membership option specifically aimed at Businesses. In fact, at the presentations which took place much was made of that option. Not sure if that still exists or if any Business actually signed up. I think it offered several business related benefits? Also not sure to what extent it was promoted way back then, but it is something worth pursuing. What you're saying is right. My suggestion though, in the first instance, is to get the Society to promote local small/very small businesses, with an affinity to MFC, to the members with no obligation. For example "Jimmy Bair joiners - Jimmy is a well fan/season ticket holder...contact him for your joinery needs." Stage 2 would be, in return, to get Jimmy help the Society in some way. That way we're supporting local businesses and they support us. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dennyc Posted March 1 Report Share Posted March 1 1 minute ago, Kmcalpin said: What you're saying is right. My suggestion though, in the first instance, is to get the Society to promote local small/very small businesses, with an affinity to MFC, to the members with no obligation. For example "Jimmy Bair joiners - Jimmy is a well fan/season ticket holder...contact him for your joinery needs." Stage 2 would be, in return, to get Jimmy help the Society in some way. That way we're supporting local businesses and they support us. I think there is room for both although I accept they have to start somewhere. Why can't local Financial Institutions be approached? After all the people they serve are local and provide them with their profits and bonuses. Time to give something back. Come to think of it, let's include all the major Supermarkets as well. The list is massive. Such local investment was vital to fan ownership success elsewhere. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wellgirl Posted March 1 Report Share Posted March 1 31 minutes ago, Kmcalpin said: What you're saying is right. My suggestion though, in the first instance, is to get the Society to promote local small/very small businesses, with an affinity to MFC, to the members with no obligation. For example "Jimmy Bair joiners - Jimmy is a well fan/season ticket holder...contact him for your joinery needs." Stage 2 would be, in return, to get Jimmy help the Society in some way. That way we're supporting local businesses and they support us. They used to do this if you bought a season ticket. There would be a discount book on the back. However some companies also give discount to season ticket holders and don't promote it as well as they could. When I was a member of nl leisure I had no idea having a season ticket would have got me a discount. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kmcalpin Posted March 1 Author Report Share Posted March 1 I'm sure the owner of Strongman Removals is a Well fan for example. That's perhaps the type / size of business I'm thinking of. I should say I haven't dealt with them personally. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wellgirl Posted March 1 Report Share Posted March 1 46 minutes ago, dennyc said: I think there is room for both although I accept they have to start somewhere. Why can't local Financial Institutions be approached? After all the people they serve are local and provide them with their profits and bonuses. Time to give something back. Come to think of it, let's include all the major Supermarkets as well. The list is massive. Such local investment was vital to fan ownership success elsewhere. Possibly because they dont have the money to put into the club that we need. I completely agree with your view but right now I just want investment in the club because we badly need it. I support the well society but it isn't enough in my view Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dennyc Posted March 1 Report Share Posted March 1 45 minutes ago, wellgirl said: Possibly because they dont have the money to put into the club that we need. I completely agree with your view but right now I just want investment in the club because we badly need it. I support the well society but it isn't enough in my view To clarify. I was not suggesting they could pump in millions, or be the major investor. I was suggesting they could sign up as Corporate Well Society members paying annual/monthly Membership fee at a much higher rate than an ordinary fan. A dozen or more Companies doing that would come to a sizeable amount. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Villageman Posted March 1 Report Share Posted March 1 19 hours ago, Kmcalpin said: First of all welcome. Great first post. I've been banging on about this very issue for several years now and whatever strategy the Society adopts, increasing member income is a must. When the Society was first launched in 2011 there were several ways in which members could pay to attain certain levels of membership such as Steel, Amber etc. Many such as myself paid in lump sums and we thought thats it. Others began to pay in modest monthly amounts. The marketing strategy was never updated and some members, like me, stopped paying and others fell by the wayside for several reasons. Payment/membership methods just evolved without any systematic or methodical approach or publicity. By default, monthly subscriptions became the norm. We were never really informed about this change or encouraged to set up monthly DDs. This has improved, a bit, of late I have to say. What is required now is to completely relaunch the subscription options and publicise them to all and sundry. Contact all memebrs, so that we all know. What about junior members who have now become adults? Season ticket holders who are not members? Good point. Some are inherently opposed to the Society and will not change; thats life. Some were extremely cautious and suspicious at the outset and thought they'd lose their hard earned money to a seemingly hare brained scheme. Thats the 2 reasons I know about. In addition, there will be a host of other reasons. Some research might not go amiss here - brief interviews on match days? Much work needs to be done to increase membership subscriptions. A starting point will be to update all records, although thats easier said than done. Although important, member subscriptions will not be sufficient to raise necessary funds. What about connecting to local businesses? There are bound to be many self employed members or owners of small businesses. What about advertising their services? Providing that they were competitive pricewise, I'm sure members would rather give their custom to other Well fans would they not? Just a few thoughts from a rank and file perspective. Should not be too difficult, given details of those members plus the rules for the junior steel i could prepare a spread sheet provided i can do it home. Based in Deepest South Lanarkshire. Issue maybe releasing that data to me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kmcalpin Posted March 3 Author Report Share Posted March 3 By way of context, Dunfermline recently announced an annual loss of £1m, largely covering the period they were languishing in League 1. Ross County has just announced a loss of £580K - to be made good by Uncle Roy's company. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay Posted March 8 Report Share Posted March 8 On 2/28/2024 at 11:08 PM, joewarkfanclub said: Thanks for this information. As a contributing member I may be willing to increase my monthly contribution if the WS continue to hold a majority share and have control of the club. If an outside investor came in and wanted to take a majority shareholding and that was voted through, fair enough. However, I would not longer feel compelled to contribute financially. I would suggest that I would not be the only on to feel this way. So there needs to he an understanding with any investor that the money coming in from Society members cannot be taken for granted should they try and force through majority shareholding. There would undoubtedly be a further gap in funding they would need to meet in those circumstances 100% agree. As someone who pays monthly & gives up a lot of time to the Well Society (Wednesday is the only evening this week there's not been some sort of Society meeting!), I personally wouldn't necessarily be interested in giving either if the Society was no longer the majority shareholder - that's just a personal view obviously. I have contributed that money & energy to date either because we were working towards fan-ownership, or because fan-ownership is in play. If you don't have either of those reasons to contribute financially, there can be no expectation that folk will contribute financially. On 2/28/2024 at 11:30 PM, joewarkfanclub said: Absolutely this. There seems to be the view that we have to give up majority shareholding to secure any investment. This shows it is possible to maintain WS Ownership and get business partners on board. Lets not sell the family jewels too cheaply. By all accounts the numbers veing offered by our 2 lead investors are nowhere near what Hibs have secured. Again, agreed 100%. There are those of us on the Well Society Board who completely recognise that attracting external investment while still maintaining fan-ownership is far from radical. In fact, as I've mentioned before, the video that kicked this all off was specifically about attracting exactly that kind of investment - spelt out by Leann Crichton inviting investors to join the Well Society members who own the club, rather than replace them. On 3/1/2024 at 2:12 PM, dennyc said: On a more general point, I don't think it reflects well that basic membership levels are the only indicator that the Society Board appear (or appeared) happy to openly share. Hopefully the planned online forums are a sign of a more open approach. Jay and a few others in the know do seem to have taken that on board. So no offence meant to them. Folk need to know the full picture if they are to part with hard earned cash. Having now disclosed that just 1500 (38%) of 3800 members actively subscribe, it is clear the enormity of the task that lies ahead if the Society are to provide the back up funds required to cover the Club's potential shortfall should performances targets/players sales not be achieved annually. And due to inflation, increasing Stadium costs etc, that potential shortfall will almost certainly increase. A 400% uplift in contributions from those 1500 members seems pretty unrealistic to me. I guess, as a positive, those non paying members and local Businesses do provide opportunities for growth. But Membership needs to rise substantially, and quickly. I really hope I am wrong, and not to downplay the efforts being made by Jay and others as they are much appreciated, but at the end of the day I think we will end up with two realistic options. Accept the external investment that may be offered if satisfactory terms that protect Club Assets can be negotiated, or accept that we need to find a level at which Motherwell FC can function within their income level. One option will likely surrender fan ownership. Setting aside the rights and wrongs of the look, I think we can now see why the Club Board felt it necessary to issue that video. The forthcoming Board changes also suggest all is not good. No offence taken! I don't think it's necessarily about the Society being happy to share certain information - the vast majority of this kind of information should be accessible and transparent. A fan ownership organisation has to be more honest & more transparent than an ordinary football club, and that's something myself & one or two others on the board had been trying to push forward for some years without much success. However, that said, when the approach taken to recording & updating the information is simply not good enough from an administrative point of view, I think it probably throws up a few barriers when folk ask to access that information. There's a couple of reasons for that, but the main one for me is that the Society, quite some time ago, put a lot of effort into identifying a new CRM system that would allow us not just to easily maintain & update membership information but would, hopefully further down the line, allow members themselves to access that information, to see how much they'd contributed, their membership level etc, without having to ask. The club, however, was more interested in pursuing a system that would serve both organisations, as well as the Community Trust - a sensible, welcome approach, but a approach that, after several years, has never resulted in anything worthwhile. I think the reality now is that the Society needs to return to that original plan which, along with all the other work being done in the communications workstream, will undoubtedly lead to far more information with greater transparency being accessible. In that regard, I'd ask both members & non-members just to hang fire for a few months & then judge the Society's output in terms of communication & the ability to access information. If it's still shit, then the work we're currently undertaken hasn't been good enough - but I'm actually buzzing about the folk we've gotten involved in that, so I'm very confident about vastly improving things over the coming months. All this kind of information is also directly feeding into the strategy that the Society Board is now putting together. Negotiations between the club and the investors mentioned at the AGM will continue following the consultation, but we as a Society Board have to behave as though we're going to be the majority shareholder come the summer - investors can pull out, due diligence can raise serious red flags, members could vote against investment options (something made even more likely now given 35% have indicated they'd vote against regardless of offer). We're meeting with some very impressive, dynamic people in both the business & football world to feed into that strategy, we're looking at serious proposals that would allow the club itself to generate more income alongside the Well Society (to show that the assumption that the Society alone should be expected to foot the hypothetical financial gap is not necessarily accurate), and we're preparing the kind of information you're speaking about to ensure that Well Society members can not only be sure that the Society is a reasonable enough default option, but that it's actually the best option on the table. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joewarkfanclub Posted March 8 Report Share Posted March 8 Great update Jay. Thanks for all the effort you and the rest of the Society Board are putting into this. Its the kind of thing that should have been happening from the outset. I get that there were lots of reasons it wasnt, but great to see that its getting done now. More power to you all. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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