Home Truths

One of the big challenges in recent months has the issue of the home ground at Stonebridge Road.  Currently leased for the next 16 years, it’s not really the most attractive sporting venue in the world, though the pitch is immaculate, maintained by the rapping groundsman, Peter Norton.  The Club were looking at a new stadium before MyFootballClub took over, and discussions have continued since then.

These seemed to fall through in August when the local councils (Kent County and Gravesham Borough) and  said they would not support a community stadium on the old A2 site.  Following this blow, the freehold was put up for sale by the owners, Land Security, who also gave the club the opportunity to make an offer before the 21st Sept auction.  A group of MyFC members, directors and other supporters of the club got together to raise the funds – not an insubstantial amount, somewhere between £400-600,000.

New Player

And that was going reasonably well until Gravesham Borough Council stepped in on the 17th September and bought the ground.  This has changed the game again, as there are now two options:

1) Continue to raise the funds in order to buy the ground from the Council
2) Take up the offer of long-term, peppercorn rent

Learning to Juggle

Both have their good and bad points, but I feel that the Society Board members should not be pushing one argument over another, which has happened before and cause a lot of division.  Instead they should be monitoring the debate, providing information where needed and pushing things through at the club on behalf of members.  Despite the usual circular and emotive debate, thankfully both sides have been allowed to discuss the options.

As an organisation, we’re still struggling to deal with more than one item at a time, a shame as important issues are neglected whilst everyone’s energy is focused on the Big News.  Again, this is something that I was hoping for from the new Board – to each take ownership of different areas and foster groups of members to deal with the issues and come back to the Society.

Good news in this regard is that the Operator is planning a revamp to the website which should make this more of a reality.  This should also improve communications, allowing casual members to easily see what’s going on and feel involved.  This is essential for maintaining and growing membership beyond the hardcore MyFootballClub fans and local Ebbsfleet fans.

MyFootballGround

Incidentally, funds for the ground purchase are still being raised by the new company, MyFootballGround.  Going on what we’ve done before and the way the forum discussion’s been going, if the full amount isn’t reached MyFG will probably continue and become the company that develops the stadium.  All quite exciting, whatever the outcome!

If you’re interested you can email 0800 334 5605 or e-mail Trustboard@myfootballclub.co.uk

MyFootballClub’s new board – 3rd time lucky?

In August, 20 candidates campaigned for seats on the MyFootballClub Society Board and the “lucky” 7 will direct the strategy over the next year, a critical role as the Society is the main financial support for Ebbsfleet United.

Despite being elected to represent the members of the Society, some of the previous Board members sermonised about their view of responsible ownership, actively opposing the open, community decision-making way of thinking that MyFootballClub was based on.  In particular, this was seen in some of the more contentious issues during the year, such as the Club budget, membership fees and player sales.

The forum discussions about these decisions went on and on for dozens of pages, with very few new facts or analysis produced along the way.  The more vocal contributors quickly dug in their heels and the casual members had no way of tracking the debate or main points.  We still need something more than the forums in this regard, at the very least to get the main points summarised regularly.

I think one of the biggest factors in the state of anomie that sometimes seems to pervade the MyFC community is the lack of faith from the Board in the ability of the membership to make the right choices.  Alice Casey describes this perfectly:

…decision makers don’t give enough credit to public wisdom and intelligence, the press consistently portray the public as being respondent, passive and powerless rather than active and influential, and people themselves do not feel able to influence decisions in their communities. These three have worked together to ensure that many citizens remain as passive consumers.

Of course for many members, MyFC is a luxury item, so the constant peril at Ebbsfleet is that if members are not engaged with the Club or if the cost is too high (bascially value for money), they can walk away.  I don’t use the term  “peril” lightly: as widely predicted, 20,000 members did not renew in February 2008.  In the run up to that deadline the Board spent far too much time wringing their hands over this, rather than deal with the issues that were causing.

My view remains that the two most important roles for the Board are to build the community within the Society itself, and to implement mechanisms to inform and involve members in the activity of the Club.

Building a succesful internet community
I’m thinking along the lines of Slice the Pie or Zopa.  I refer to these two specifically as they were also featured in Ivo Gormley’s film, “Us, Now” alongside MyFootballClub.  Like MyFC, these organisations are set up in response to the failure of “real” institutions (like record companies and banks) for certain segments of those market.

They have a product which is easy for individual members to join, participate in, and contribute towards the development of the community.  Because of this openness, they are sustainable and successful.  It’s not the ownership that is the attractive thing about MyFC, it’s the participation.

Enabling members to collectively contribute
This means more than “give us your money, now f**k off”, which is sometimes how it can feel as MyFootballClub member.  It means being open about the decisions that are being made, and that requires a philosophical change of attitude from the Club as well as the Board.

But the most urgent task for the new Board must be to sort out the communication between the Club and the Members, and maximise members involvement with decisions.

The election result:

The above was draft before the election but I didn’t post due to work things & holiday.

I’m a little bit disappointed that a couple of candidates with more technical and financial nous narrowly missed out, but the bad eggs either stood down or didn’t make it through nomination.  They’re a reasonable crew, don’t agree with all of them all of the time, but that’s democracy for you.

In general they are starting well, and the new Chairman is also keen to improve communications.   There have been a few big issues that have cropped up over the last couple of months that have served to rally people to the cause and bring cohesion to the organisation.  But I’ll talk about them later.

Crowdsourcing: the ping pong approach

I keep moaning about how MyFootballClub doesn’t always engage the principle of Wisdom of Crowds, but I neglected to mention this year’s kit manufacturer vote.  It’s a process I think we should have been shouting from the rooftops.

Similar to how Dave Pollard described in this post from 2004, the crowd (members) were employed to provide opinion and make the final choice, with the experts (The CEO and Chairman) using this information when going through the confidential tenders, but presenting an impartial summary back to the members.  This was a completely different approach than the previous season’s decision.

08/09 Nike Vote
In March 2008, shortly after taking over Ebbsfleet, we were approached by Nike, who offered to run our club shop, provide a wide selection of merchandise and all kinds of goodies, including the chance to choose a kit design.  It was a take it or leave it vote.

Like the spotty geek invited to the prom by the Netball captain, we jumped at the chance, though almost 10% of those that voted didn’t want it: Nike were too big, unethical, and that we were being pressure into making the decision.

In the end the chosen kit designs meant that a 3rd kit was required later in the season, because of colour clashes.  Nobody at the club or Society saw coming, but one might expect Nike would be aware of that kind of problem.  At the end of the season, there were piles of unsold shirts that the club still had to pay for, despite the promise of levels stock based on demand.

Oh, and the no penalty opt-out clause were told about – we’d “misinterpreted” this (and that’s not necessarily Nike’s fault, I hasten to add).

09/10 Ebbsfleet Kit Manufacturer process

As the time for exploring the contract approached, the Board and CEO drew up criteria list and asked individual members to rank them.   These included cost of kit, prestige of manufacturer, local supplier, variety of additional merchandise amongst others.

When three suppliers tendered for the contract, the CEO and Chairman used their judgement to give a point score for each criteria for each company.  There was a clear distinction between the three, with some companies scoring high on some criteria but low on others.

The results and a summary of the reasons for the point score were given to members.  The terms of each deal were confidential, but the companies agreed to demonstrate the expected profit to the Club at varying levels of merchandise sales.  The members were allowed to make their choice from the three (we chose Vandanel).

As far as I know, this was the first time a commercial decision has been made in such an open way from start to finish, passing back and forth between non-expert crowd and experts at the club.  We should try to do more business this way.

Are we learning?

MyFootballClub members are about to hold their second full Society Board election since taking over ownership and management of Ebbsfleet United in February 2008.

The first election had a strange result, not least because the role of the Board in relation to the Club management was not defined.   Six local candidates  (and 1 from elsewhere in the UK ) were elected, none of whom had any experience of any social media,  internet governance or other qualities that would suggest they could take MyFootballClub from a good idea to a succesful organisation.

As a result, all but one of the original candidates had resigned by February 2009, at which point the level of dissatisfaction with the project was made clear.  20,000 of the members chose not to renew their subscription, putting the club in a dangerous financial situation, despite the existing debts having been cleared by the takeover.  This is just about resolved thanks a tight budget prepared by a group of members, and a top up of the playing budget (which is now higher than when MyFC took over) by member donations.   Compare this with many clubs facing crippling debt and/or administration at the moment.

An interim election was held in March 2009 to fill the missing places on the Board, and bizarrely, two of those who resigned only months before stood again.  The new interim Board promised to allocate specific roles to individual Board members, but I don’t feel that this has improved any communication between the Club, Members and the Board.  Some are standing again, boasting of their work for the club, e.g. “spent 6 hours dealing with the electrical wiring” when what is needed is people who can make the MyFootballClub organisation what it promised to be:

Mr Brooks has no qualms about describing his project an ethical mission. “My starting point is a firm belief in the wisdom of crowds. It’s the fans that have the club’s best interests at heart: so why shouldn’t they run it?” he asked.

Independent, 20th August 2007

Certainly there are a fair few candidates standing who are passionate about the Club, but are also clear about the distinction between organising a large group of people through a website, and making decisions and undertaking activity on their behalf.

Ebbsfleet & MyFootballClub rebuilding squad and confidence

MyFootballClub is still a rollercoaster ride. A couple of weeks ago the Club Secretary resigned and we lost several key players who were out of contract  to other clubs in the Blue Square Premier, in fact half the main team have gone.

Some of the remaining players are being sought out by rival clubs, and we’ve voted to reject offers on Michael Gash and Darius Charles.  This was a tough call, as the sale of these players could boost the playing budget for the rest of the squad.  But these two in particular have performed well this season and are firm favourites – both were bought after fundraising drives by members.  I think the most positive thing is that it’s raised the profile again, and seen the biggest vote turnout in a long time, almost 3,000 taking part.

The coach, Liam Daish,  announced that he’d like to stay on at the club, working with the “prudent” budget we’d approved; we voted to offer him a new contract.   The tight budget meant that we lost the assistant coach, but Paul McCarthy’s stepped up in this role, something members had been suggesting for a long time on the forums.

But we’re still better off than many other clubs at the moment, with no debt and a unique revenue stream.  Today it’s also reported that Setanta Sports, who have TV rights for Blue Square Premier matches, face administration, potentially a loss-earner for many clubs, but could actually be good for us  as our ability to provide TV coverage to the global membership has previously been hampered by the broadcast rules and contracts.

But you’ve gotta make up your minds. If you want to stay alive, then ante up. If you want to play it cheap, be on welfare the whole winter. I don’t want no volunteers, I don’t want no mates, there’s just too many captains on this island. Quint – Jaws (1975)

So it’s going to be an interesting summer as we fight off the circling sharks, try to boost the playing budget so that the coach can build a better team. And we’re still going through a process of organising ourselves, with votes on the size of the Society Board, and how we communicate with the Club management and each other.