Oi! What do you think I am? Some kind of administrator? Oh...

My iPhone has a voice recorder but I've no idea how good it is or how to get recordings off of it, minutes should be okay as long as there accurate.

I can't attend tonight because of other commitments. Tuesdays aren't good for me. Looking forward to reading about it tomorrow though. Hope their is a positive outcome.

Forgot to ask, is the car park near cue gardens at the back going to be open for us? If not it'll be the road

I guess so, does it ever close?

I am sure you now have minions to do those sorts of things?

I'll be taking minutes at my meeting tonight. It's not hard - if you know how to do it. The big mistake is to write down everything everyone says. There's no point. Maybe an oversimplification but basically you only need to write down things that are proposed, and things that are decided.

Loads of stuff on the net will help such as
[urlhttp://www.wikihow.com/Take-Minutes[/url

Exactly.

Key thing is that people appreciate the difference between formal minutes and informal reports - e.g. on here. Then it need not be a pain. Amazing though how many folk over the years I have come across who expect the minutes to be a verbatim record of the discussions!

My earlier comment was referring to managing people's expectations for what gets reported back on here, given that there is likely to be a lot of info imparted and relatively little decision-making. I was worried Mission might be making a big rod for his own back, speaking as one who has done that in the past. The more people post up stuff, the easier it should be, of course.

iv missed this!

Can i come please?

the more the merrier

Hi everyone,

Great meeting tonight, with a really positive attitude. I'll get my notes typed up into something readable and get them posted here. Where did I put my Red Bull?

A big thanks to Laura from Supporter's Direct and Roy from Warrington Wolves Supporters Trust for spending their time with us tonight.

Report coming soon!

Much appreciated and especially interesting to hear what could be achieved if we follow a similar route to the Warrington Supporters Trust.

OK here we go. Hopefully I've judged the content level about right! If you really want to, you can download the report [url=http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/2449471/BBST%20131009.pdfhere[/url.

[size=150Bradford Bulls Supporters Trust[/size
Meeting 13/10/09

The purpose of this meeting was to establish the feasibility of forming a Bradford Bulls Supporters Trust. The meeting was notably attended by Laura Harrison (RL Officer, Supporter’s Direct), Roy Chicken (Chairman, Warrington Wolves Supporters Trust) and in part by Stuart Duffy (PR, Bradford Bulls RLFC), as well as 14 other supporters.

Introduction to Supporters Direct - Laura Harrison
Supporters Direct was set up in response to a government report in 1999, and is itself a trust (the board are appointed by its members, and major decisions are voted on by members). Laura is dedicated to Rugby League, and there are currently 9 rugby league supporters trusts.
Laura had a meeting with the Bulls in July and found them open to the idea of a supporters trust. She advised that any supporters trust should be independent from the club, and not simply become a fundraising arm of the club. Supporters Direct can offer assistance with drawing up the goals and rules of a trust, offer training and a grant of up to £1000 to help the trust form.
Laura gave us some useful information such as advice on setting up a trust and a case study. She will supply these documents in electronic form for everyone to download.

Introduction to Warrington Wolves Supporters Trust - Roy Chicken
Warrington Wolves Supporters' Trust elected board run the supporters trust and the squadbuilder programme as seperate entities. Supporters pay £5 per year to join the trust, or a minimum of £5 per month to join squadbuilder.
Squadbuilder is a subsection of the Supporters' Trust, so Squadbuilder members are automatically members of the Trust. There are 11 members on the board, who meet once a month and have regular meetings with the club.
Squadbuilder was created to sponsor players and pay bursaries directly to young players to enable young talent to play at the club (for example, while going through college). All academy player shirts have sqadbuilder on their playing shirt, as do first team players who have been sponsored by squadbuilder in the past. Squadbuilder has sponsored players such as Kevin Penny and Chris Riley. They also have a squadbuilder awards night, and contribute towards the Warrington service area team.
The supporters trust organise fundraising events such as quiz nights, which are extremely well attended by first team players and coaches. They have approximately 200 members, of which around 30 are actively involved with the trust. Between the trust and the squadbuilder programme they raise approximately £15,000 a year.
Roy advised to make sure work is delegated, not centred around one or two members, as there is simply too much work for a handful of people. He said one of their greatest challenges was member retention.

BISA - “Adeybull”
BISA was a supporters association with similar goals to the Wolves trust, however as it was an association it was not as formally structured. Many people joined simply as a ‘move back to Odsal’ movement, and lost interest after that. It failed due to a lack of people prepared to devote time to the association, so it was left to only a handful of people.

Bradford Bulls Supporters Trust - Open Discussion
The discussion focused around two themes, goals and communication. As the ‘sponsor a player in 2010’ has proved so popular, it was proposed that the trust could focus on helping the reserve and academy teams at the Bulls, and perhaps run a similar sponsor a player scheme in 2011. It was proposed that a trust could raise money and grant bursaries to junior players directly. The trust could initially use the Wolves trust as a model. Key to the success of a trust would be communicating with fans. It was also suggested that the club should try to maintain a clear separation from the club, and also not be seen as “BISA 2”. People should also be aware that, while plenty of work is required to run a trust, there can be different ‘levels’ of involvement: simply paying your membership fee, attending events, helping organise events or taking a seat on the board. People should not be put off from joining the trust because they feel they will be inundated with requests to help out.

Stuart Duffy
Stuart Duffy joined us to discuss the idea of a trust to help players playing at a junior level in the club. Stuart said the club would be very enthusiastic about this, and would potentially support the trust in a similar manner to the Wolves (logos on players shirts, help with communication including club programme, club website and Telegraph and Argus). He also said the first team players would assist with events such as a trust awards night.

He left us with this example: James Donaldson is from Cumbria, and so needed support with living expenses to move to the local area separate from his wage from the club. This would be an ideal opportunity for the trust to help the club whilst retaining its independence.

Next Steps
The next steps are to finalise a goal for the trust and to appoint a “working group” to set up the trust.
After that an open meeting would be held, where the working group would present the case for a trust. At this meeting the trust would be approved, and the working group would become the interim board.
The interim board would then work towards launching the trust before holding a first AGM, where a board would be elected to take the trust forward.





So to summarise, going down a player bursary scheme proved popular, and whilst running a trust can be a time consuming and sometimes thankless task, we can achieve a lot and the club are prepared to give us their backing. What do people think of the bursary idea? Could be help bring the next generation of players to the club?

Also, if any attendees feel I've missed anything important out, feel free to add it to the discussion!

Thanks Roy, obviously slightly misunderstood there. I'll update accordingly.

Interesting. It's the squadbuilder idea which I've seen patches of from time to time, but never fully grasped. Reading that certainly makes more sense of it, and something us a trust could look to perhaps emulate in the future, to as you say help bring through players of the future.

I'd obviously like to put myself forward to be part of this "working group", and help the trust in as many ways as possible.

Was much said about fundraising, how we could acheive this, and how much realistically we'd be looking at making? Or is it far too early for that kind of number crunching?

I think thats more for a trust board to decide, the important thing right now is to decide on the idea to use to 'sell' the trust, then get a working group together to rally some support and get the thing set up. But if we use Warrington as an example then hopefully we can hope to achieve a similar level of funds, certainly a few years down the road.

Yeah I suppose, it sounds more feasible that way.

Apologies for sounding a bit dim about the whole trust ideology, I seem to have grasped it now, and I look forward to helping it all get up and running!

I know we discussed some kind of email mailing list to make announcements about future meetings etc as the forum can be quite difficult to keep track of sometimes. I've been thinking, and twitter might be a good way to do this. It's dead easy for people to join, and you can receive emails and text messages from it when a message is posted if you like. It's also easier than an email list at the moment as there's no website for people to sign up on at the moment. Is everyone happy for me to go ahead and set that up?

Well done to all & especially Mission for the minutes. My concern is/was what do you hope to achieve - was there anyhting that came out apart from a fundraising group? I've done lots & it does get monotonous.

That's one of the major issues... Laura told that every trust is different in its long-term aims, the spectrum ranging from just fund-raising, to owning the club ala Bramley. E.g., a mid to long term aim might be to get a seat on the board, but the club won't go for that until the trust brings something positive to the table.

So, the ball is actually in our court - what do WE want to achieve?

(answers on a post-card

)

Amongst those present there seemed to be a unanimous desire to help the club in young player development. But, ultimately, the fact is that raising funds at some level or other becomes a necessity.

I think people agreed generally that we shouldn't start out by trying to do everything at once, but take one goal and take it forward. If we try to do everything at this stage we'll end up doing nothing. That's not to say a trust couldn't do more in the future once it is established, but let's start simple. If there is enthusiasm for helping the junior talent at the club, let's take that forward.

Obviously, any other ideas are welcome!

I think it's also worth pointing out the "sponsor a player for 2010" scheme is going to remain completely seperate.
We may look at bringing it under the trust umberella for 2011, but for now it is not.

A point I was trying to get across last night, was that people probably know exactly what's involved in running a trust (myself to an extent included, e.g. I would know what the job description for the secretary of a trust looks like, or a treasurer or chairperson for that).
My personal opinion is that a huge barrier for people getting involved is not wanting to jump in and end up being lumbered with too much.

I suggested, as we move forward, listing specific tasks people could cherrypick - that way, you've an idea of how much time and effort you're going to give up from the start, making it more likely you'll stick at it.

Also, as discussed last night, a "support team" around each postion would make things easier, i.e. through delegation.

I agree last nights meeting was informative and positive, if we can emulate the Warrington model we would be doing well, however it would be interesting to see what other trusts are doing before the next meeting of the group. Can we make contact with some of the other trusts so we can look at how other trusts help there clubs ?. It would be great to see some of "our" boys with a first team shirt in a few years time.

All sounds quite promising reading this.

I especially like the idea of support roles. Having one person basically "in charge" of certain duties, i.e. on the committee/board, but having a group of people supporting them to make the duties a lot lighter and everyone sharing the workload. That way you have quite a number of people having a little to do, instead of a small group of folk having sh*tloads. I for one don't think I'd want a full on committee role (although I tend to be persuaded lol), but I'd certainly be interest in a support type.

Apologies if this was mentioned before, but I'm reading all this while quite tired (and still at work), but has a date for the next meeting been set yet? Tuesdays are generally good for me, it was purely last night's specific day that was bad (and turned out to be quite a terrible day all round if I'm honest), so hopefully can make the next one. If not a specific date, was any kind of timescale discussed?