Supporters Direct Scotland Looks To Future Funding
Supporters Direct Scotland have today issued a press release in response to funding challenges and the resignation of CEO of SD, Dave Boyle .
There is a groundswell of support for the organisation on Social Media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The hashtag for Twitter is #savesupportersdirect.
The Scottish Council of Supporters Direct (SD) will be meeting in special session on Monday evening, 13 June 2011 to discuss the future funding of SD Scotland and the wider SD group.
A special meeting of the main board of SD was held in London on Saturday 12 June 2011 attended by Scottish Directors Kenneth Elder (a member of the Arab Trust at Dundee United FC) and Alan Harris (a member of the Rangers Trust), who is also SD Scottish Council Chairman.
Meetings are planned with the chief executive of the Scottish Football Association (SFA) and subsequently with the Scottish Government to seek continued funding for SD’s work in Scotland which has received wide praise throughout the game and from all the main political parties in Scotland.
The Football Stadia Improvement Fund, an arm of the Football Foundation, has blocked an anticipated offer to continue supporting SD nationally via the Premier League Fans’ Fund due to criticism of tweets posted by chief executive Dave Boyle on his private account on the micro-blogging site twitter.com during the evening of Saturday 21 May 2011 and the FSIF’s belief that SD responded inadequately to the situation. SD has deplored the comments and disassociated itself from them completely.
The main SD board accepted Dave Boyle’s resignation as chief executive, appointed long-standing Bees Trust member and former Brentford FC director Brian Burgess as acting chief executive, established a three member executive committee of the board including Alan Harris, to steer the organisation through the current difficulties and asked its Scottish Council to concentrate on renewing funding for its work in Scotland.
Commenting Chair of the Scottish Council of SD Alan Harris said, “The vital thing for SD Scotland now is to concentrate on securing funding for our work in Scotland and more widely throughout professional team sports. SD is playing an important role in the debates on the future of Scottish football and dealing with its financial problems. It would be a tragedy if SD was unable to continue its important work for lack of relatively small amounts of money.
“We hope that the SFA and the Scottish government will respond positively in the near future. We want to return to our core task of being a constructive partner in our game.”
Enquiries should be directed to Alan Harris on 07958 303692
Notes for Editors:
Supporters Direct
Supporters Direct’s goal is to promote sustainable football clubs based on supporters’ involvement and community ownership.
We campaign for the wider recognition of the social, cultural and economic value of football clubs. We believe that football clubs and competitions are increasingly being put at risk by short-term vested interests, poor financial management and inadequate standards of governance.
In response to this Supporters Direct aims to create the conditions in which supporters can secure influence and ownership of football clubs by providing support and guidance to supporters, promoting the value of supporter ownership and empowering supporters to set up supporters’ trusts or become members of existing trusts.
Supporters Direct is a community benefit society, owned by its member supporters’ trusts.Headline achievements:
34 Supporters’ Trusts
£3.5 Million investment in football clubs
15,000 members approx.
25 Trusts with shares in their football club
14 Directors on Football Club Boards
300 Volunteer Directors
2 Re-formed Clubs (Clydebank FC & Gretna 2008 FC)
3 Clubs owned by Supporters (Dundee FC, Clyde FC & Stirling Albion FC)
