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Dons Trust Elections - Questionnaire 2010
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| Q01 | Are you a member of WISA? If not, why not? |
| No. I wasn't closely involved at the time of the turmoil surrounding Milton Keynes. Thereafter, I didn't particularly see the need to join once the Dons Trust was in the driving seat of AFC Wimbledon. I subsequently came to the conclusion there is a role for WISA even in a trust-controlled club (see Q2), but I've focussed my attention on the Trust. | |
| Q02 | What role do you think WISA has in the future of the Club/Trust? |
| It's not really for me to pontificate on this, because I'm not a member. I think that WISA does have a role but that, as the DT is running our club, it's a fairly small role. So WISA:
" Has a part to play in acting as a forum through which supporters can orchestrate objections to actions taken by the DTB (the counter-argument being: why can't the Trust itself provide such a forum?); " Can probably afford to adopt a more strident tone on franchising (and on one particular franchise) than the club and trust. I appreciate the opportunity to respond to a questionnaire like this, so well done WISA. But I'm not quite sure why this is being organised by WISA rather than the Trust. |
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| Q03 | What personal qualities (other than professional skills, and a capacity for hard work) do you have that the Dons Trust Board needs? |
| I'll stick with what I said in my manifesto on this: " An ability to work with a wide range of people and to respect others' views; " An ability to analyse complex situations and to look at both sides of an argument; " I am accustomed to getting things done on committees (we do committees, in the civil service!); " Familiarity with the financial side of things, from a prior career in banking; " I understand how the DT works; " Oh, and I love our club! |
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| Q04 | What do you perceive the role of the Dons Trust to be? In particular, what do you see its role to be in relation to the club? What is the role of the members/owners? |
| When it comes to significant decisions on the direction of the club, and appointing the club's board, the Trust calls the shots. The Trust's Board shouldn't micro-manage the club's management but it should hold them to account, via the Chief Executive, for performance. The Trust has some other activities - obviously the task of running itself (membership etc) and also fundraising and community work. These are absolutely vital activities although it's perhaps a matter of circumstance rather than conviction as to whether they are better run under the umbrella of the Trust or the Club. (I'm tremendously pleased that efforts have recently been made to engage with wider community groups, such as the flag painted by people with learning difficulties - let's have more of this please.) The members of the Trust not only get to elect the Trust's board (save for any co-opted Board members) but also make the major decisions in the Trust, and thereby in the club. That's a wonderful thing about AFC Wimbledon, and contributes to the positive vibe that surrounds this club. Members can play their part very actively, by participating in working groups and even submitting Members' Resolutions. However, on the latter, it's often more effective to get the Board to bring forward proposals than to go solo. |
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| Q05 | Have you been involved in any projects / organisations / working parties or volunteer groups on behalf of the Club or the Dons Trust? If so, what was your role and what did you achieve? If elected, and bearing in mind the time consuming nature of the Dons Trust Board, will you still carry on this work? |
| Yes. I was involved on the fundraising group for a year or two from an early stage (Walk for Wimbledon II was my biggest contribution during that time). Then I was DT Secretary for two years. During that time I also participated in the Constitutional Review Group and was, for a few months, a co-opted Board member. For the past two years I've been running the fundraising group and have managed individual projects within that. The way the DTB operates is different from when it was first set up and shouldn't, in itself, be a vast time commitment. I'm not proposing to take on substantial additional duties, over and above running the fundraising group and participating as a Board member. If someone came along who was as good as or better than me at fundraising, then I'd be happy to take on another responsibility instead. |
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| Q06 | How will you get more people to volunteer and help out the club? |
| This is vital. We need to communicate better as to what it's like to be a volunteer. We should explain what's in it for volunteers (getting to know more people, CV building, satisfaction of a job well done, etc). Not a new idea, but let's have a register of people with particular expertise so that we don't have to press-gang the same people for the same tasks every time, and so that each working group doesn't need to separately develop its own separate network of people who can do particular things. I think the club's got better at making volunteers feel appreciated. Fans have to do their bit on this too of course. I think we need to recognise that volunteers will come and go (and hopefully come back again) as their life circumstances change, and not see that as a bad thing. I do quite a lot for the Trust but it's very seldom that my fundraising duties prevent me from watching a game. I feel a bit uneasy that those fans who are stewards miss so much of the game. In the medium to long term, I do wonder whether roles that prevent people from watching the game should be paid. |
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| Q07 | What are the biggest problems facing the Dons Trust? And what three things would you suggest to make it more dynamic? |
| First, let's not be too hard on ourselves. Taken together, our Trust and club have made a big impact on English football over the past eight years. We've created a club that's the envy of many football supporters, both in non-league and the professional game. But, yes, there are some issues. We're not great at communication. It's not ideal that, when you look round the room at SGMs, there are so few people and they're arguably not entirely representative of our fan base. And, as with any voluntary organisation, we sometimes suffer because it's not as easy to hold people to account for doing what they said they'd do as it is in a workplace. So: " Communications - see Q16; " Increasing member participation - find a way of managing meetings so that we can deal with the crusty stuff separately from engaging our members in discussions that will interest them (eg open meetings on match days where issues are discussed, and then voted on as a formality at a subsequent SGM); " Finding ways of creating a culture where people are constructively challenged if they say "I will do X" and fail to do so. There's no easy answer here - it's about people and culture - learning how to challenge people constructively and creating a virtuous circle where that becomes less necessary as people are spurred on to perform. |
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| Q08 | Why do you believe you can put your views into practice and deliver on any promises you make? How much time do you have to devote to Trust matters? |
| I'm confident that I can be effective on the Board because I know how it operates, having served on it in the past. In a work context, I'm pretty accustomed to sitting on various committees whose role is to provide oversight of particular projects by asking the right questions. Sitting on the Board shouldn't be hugely time consuming - it involves reading (and thinking about) papers in advance of Board meetings and turning up to monthly meetings (plus a few further meetings, SGMs, etc). No doubt there's some email traffic as well, but that can be fitted around other things. I run the fundraising group already. I'm not going to take on loads of additional responsibilities, if I'm appointed to the Board, so long as I continue to hold that fundraising role. I'm amenable to that portfolio being shifted or shared if my participation in the DTB places a greater time demand than I anticipate. |
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| Q09 | Do you have any financial interests in the club, associated companies or Trust? If so, please could you specify? |
| I hold shares in AFCW PLC and some Dons Trust bonds. Other than that, nothing. | |
| Q10 | If we are not promoted this season, do you think we should try to get a league place and / or go professional (i.e. take on full-time players) as soon as possible, whatever the cost (financial or otherwise)? Is fan ownership non-negotiable? |
| I'm ambitious for this club to go further up the pyramid. How quickly? I think we can quite easily sustain a few years in the BSP, if need be, before fans start to become impatient. Promotion at whatever cost? Of course not. Football is littered with clubs whose owners have thrown caution to the wind and come a cropper. You can pick up the pieces once (as we have done). Twice would be really hard. For me, fan ownership is a big part of what makes our club special. If our 3,000 supporters were carbon copies of me, then we'd all keep on supporting AFCW in the BSP (if we didn't make it to the League) without being willing to exchange ownership of the club for League success, and would even withstand the odd downward blip in our fortunes. So, does that mean there are no possible circumstances under which it would be right for the Trust to sell the club? That's harder to say. Imagine a scenario in which further success eluded us and, bit by bit, the 2,999 supporters who aren't carbon copies of me started to drift away. Gates reduce further, playing budgets fall, the club starts to drift down the leagues - you can imagine the spiral. Is there a point at which remaining "fan owned" starts to feel a bit hollow, when there are only 150 people preserving the Wimbledon traditions by bothering to turn up and watch and only 50 of them are DT members? My honest answer to that is that (1) that would then be an issue for the membership to decide, presented with the options. I'd defend their right to choose to remain fan-owned in such a circumstance if that's what they wanted. However, (2) I'm not sure, in all honesty, how often I'd be part of the 150 crowd watching (I wouldn't mind the football so much, but the lack of atmosphere would pretty much kill it for me). Maybe, as one of the 50 remaining DT members, I'd want to hear what else was on offer. So, a heretical and depressing picture, isn't it? Well yes, but I don't think it's going to happen. Thanks to our predecessor club and the past eight years, we've built up enough critical mass for implosion to be a small risk. But the point I'm making is this. We can make fervent promises about what we will never allow to happen. But making those fervent promises come true depends only partly on what we believe and, to a large extent, on the energy and skill we continue to invest in making AFC Wimbledon a success. Being a fan-owned club with a bullet-proof Constitution doesn't take those risks away. That's why, personally, I'll look as closely at the qualities that candidates bring to the Board as I will at their beliefs. |
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| Q11 | What schemes should / would you put in place to help reduce the club's debt? |
| I chair the fundraising group, and we have a pipeline of projects coming up, including a special guest dinner (Terry's Tales - promises to be a great evening - credit goes to Simon Bath, among others), a sponsored walk and other things. There are only so many big projects we can handle, unless the pool of project managers expands further, and there are risks if we over-commit ourselves. But I've been heartened by some enthusiastic new volunteers coming forward. So, overall, I think the strategy should be to keep a sustainable pipeline of projects to repay what is an overall manageable debt burden rather than jump at boom-or-bust projects. A couple of other thoughts. First, to date, AFC Wimbledon has paid the interest on the club's borrowings but the Trust has been responsible for repaying principal. There's no inherent reason why that should be the natural order of things, and the terms of our loan with Barclays mean that the principal repayments will increase over time while the interest payments will get smaller (like a mortgage). I think we may need to review the relative burdens on the club and fundraising team for debt service at some stage. It would be good to take advantage of the current low interest rate environment to pay off debt a bit faster. A second thought is addressed in Q13 below. |
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| Q12 | What action will you take if you feel the Club is committing itself to ventures it cannot afford? |
| The Chief Executive presents the club's budget to the DT Board for discussion while it is being prepared and then again, for final approval. I'd see it as part of my fiduciary role as a DTB member to satisfy myself it's sound - not by poring over every detail but by probing some of the key assumptions underpinning it. Clearly, if it involved commitments that I thought the club couldn't afford, then I'd have to object. Once the budget is approved, the club should report periodically to the DTB about performance relative to budget. I don't know how regularly this takes place but quarterly would feel about right. If the club enters into commitments that take it off course for its budget, then the CEO would need to tell the DTB about this (there are probably delegated limits for a certain level of tolerance but I don't know what those are). So, again, the DTB would have an opportunity to satisfy themselves with the commitments being made (requesting an updated budget if that were necessary) and object to any unaffordable ventures. In any walk of business, the 'base case' for any venture can usually look pretty rosy (or it wouldn't get past the drawing board). It's the downside risks that matter. So, for major projects, I'd want to see some contingencies built in and downside sensitivities of the key variables. Again, if it exposes us to an unacceptable level of risk, the project shouldn't proceed. |
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| Q13 | If the Club makes a profit from FA Cup or Trophy runs, or from the sale of players, should that windfall be used to improve the infrastructure of the Club or be used to improve the playing squad? |
| It's hard to answer that in absolute terms - it depends how much money we're talking about. I don't think large amounts should automatically go into boosting the squad, and there's arguably a case (while interest rates are still low) for paying off as much debt as we can. One idea that occurs to me is to put a percentage of cup / transfer money into a sinking fund for supplementing the playing budget. So, say we decided that the percentage was 50% and that money would be released over five years. Then suppose we received £100K from selling a player. £50K would go into paying off our borrowings and £50K into the sinking fund. £10K would be released from the fund in the current season, and again in each of the four subsequent seasons, to supplement the basic playing budget. Over time, as we buy and sell players and our cup fortunes wax and wane, that might even itself out a bit. It would provide a route for some cup / transfer proceeds to find their way into the playing budget (at the moment, we budget to break even from year to year, without budgeting for a cup run). It also gives the manager an incentive to generate lucrative transfers and cup runs because it will help supplement his budget. Worthwhile idea or too convoluted? I'm not yet sure. |
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| Q14 | Do you see The Fans Stadium, Kingsmeadow, as a temporary or permanent home for AFC Wimbledon? |
| A couple of years ago, I would have said that it's our long-term temporary abode, recognising an eventual aim to return to Wimbledon (perhaps a decade or two from now). However, our recent fortunes on the pitch have brought the issue of outgrowing KM into much sharper focus. We need to look actively at the options and develop a strategy for realising the preferred option (see Q15 below). I think, in the meantime, we can continue (but no faster than necessary) to develop KM into a stadium that can accommodate League football. However, I suspect (with no inside knowledge on the subject) that the League's requirements will become ever more stringent, and it may be that the work required to maintain KM as a ground eligible in the long term for League football will become more demanding than we currently anticipate. So, even if we were to decide as a Trust to ditch the aim of returning to Wimbledon, KM might not work out long-term anyway. | |
| Q15 | What is your opinion on the possibility of a move to the Greyhound Stadium what would you do if elected to make it a reality? |
| Erik Samuelson's mentioned in the Workington programme about meeting Merton Council "to explore possible sites for a stadium in the borough". I have no inside knowledge as to whether one of those sites is the Greyhound Stadium. I'd love to think there are suitable sites in Wimbledon for a football stadium, either now or in the near future. I'd like it even better if there were a suitable site in Wimbledon for a football stadium that didn't sound the death knell of greyhound racing and stock car racing in the borough. I'm not on the Stadium Working Group. My role as a Board member would be to press the executive to investigate different options for meeting our stadium needs in the future, to stress the importance of ensuring that locations in Wimbledon are investigated as part of those options (not that they'd need telling) and to probe the options presented to us. I'd want to understand the commercial and financial risks of the options in some detail (indeed, given my background, I hope I could contribute in a bit more depth on this). The Board could then compare the options, reach its conclusions and present them to the membership with appropriate recommendations. I hope a return to a stadium in Wimbledon will be viable. But any Board member needs to recognise that the work identified above might or might not succeed in identifying a viable option. I wouldn't want to risk the future of AFC Wimbledon on a project that doesn't stack up. |
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| Q16 | What will you do to improve communication between the Trust members and their board? |
| I would suggest: " A report to members early in the New Year (after the election) on the Board's priorities for the year (we used to do this); " A report, as part of the AGM papers, on the extent to which those priorities have been met; " Rejig SGMs - for instance, more of an open meeting style for discussing particular topics, with formal business compressed into a tighter slot in a way that doesn't turn everyone else off; " A rota for DTB members to man the DT table in the back bar; " Making sure that the DT section of the club's website is kept up to date - including posting Board minutes on a timely basis; " Using the matchday programme to feature DT issues (but actually some efforts have been made in this direction recently). |
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| Q17 | Do you believe that the Trust should adopt a clear stance on issues such as Milton Keynes’ inclusion in the England 2018 World Cup bid, or do you think that the Trust should maintain a diplomatic silence and leave such issues to WISA? |
| My own preference is for the Trust's Board to make a short, dignified statement about its views on the subject (as indeed it did). You could take issue that that should be put to the membership first, but arguably "published and be damned" is the line to take. I don't think the Trust or the Club should divert too much of its energy into this, and I think it's something on which WISA can usefully take up the cudgel. | |
| Q18 | Should Trust board members always be bound by ‘collective responsibility’? |
| This can mean different things to different people. I'm in favour of DTB members having the right to go on record that they were against a particular decision. Indeed, as DTB Secretary, I developed a mechanism for this - see here (in particular paragraph 11 and below). Maybe not the best of all possible solutions, but a step forward from what it was before. I also don't think it's necessary to present DTB recommendations to the membership as being unanimous views. Actually, it's quite helpful, as a member, to know when recommendations aren't unanimous. The fact that different DTB members gave their reasons at the AGM for differing views on the representation of the executive on the DTB was very constructive, and was handled well. However, once a decision is taken to act in a certain way, then collective responsibility for its implementation should apply. If DTB members can't bring themselves to co-operate, then they should resign. |