Annual General Meeting, 4th October 2007

Venue: Raith Suite, Starks Park, Kirkcaldy

Board Members Present: Alan Russell, Blair White, Graeme Condie, George Howie, John Mainland, James Proctor, Tom Phillips
Apologies (Board Members): Mike Melville, Tam Cunningham

Members Present: 10
Apologies (Members): 13
Apologies were received from George Aitken, George Anderson, Ann Brand, Owen Crawford, Paul Cunningham, Bill Gilby, Graham Gilby, Ross Gilby, Sheena Gilby, Chris Hynd, Chris McFarlane, Kevin Mitchell and Bert Peattie.

Opening Remarks
Alan Russell opened the meeting by explaining that although we’re almost at the end of 2007, this is actually “the 2006 AGM” to review the accounts for the 2005/06 financial year.

The 2005 AGM was held 18 months ago in April of last year – the reason for a longer period of time in between the AGMs than normal is largely due to the complexities of putting the accounts together – the 2005/06 period covers all but the very beginnings of the Reclaim The Rovers campaign, and during those months there were a huge number of small transactions going through our books that all had to be accounted for.

Alan Russell then briefly recapped the events of the past year:

• July ’06 – election of Alex Condie replacing Ali More as our (the Raith Forum’s) representative on the New Raith Rovers board
• October ’06 – Football Aid match and the Show Racism The Red Card 7s tournament
• November ’06 – new Trust website and online shop
• May ’07 – “Raith Rovers 2007” report published, comparing the topics discussed in our 2004 Consultation event with where we are three years on
• August ’07 – Trust Board planning session

In addition to these events, there are a number of ongoing activities. More fans are involved with the club, through the work of the Maintenence and Community Groups, and members of the Trust board meet regularly with the other supporters’ groups through the Raith Forum.


Nomination and Election of Trust Board
We identified gaps in our board at the last AGM, and to address these co-opted some old and some new faces onto the board:

• Graeme Condie joined in June as Treasurer
• Tam Cunningham joined in June as Membership Secretary (and has since taken over as Minutes Secretary)
• Blair White returned in July as Ambassador (and is in the process of taking over as Membership Secretary)
• Mike Melville returned in August as Comms & Media Specialist

We also rotated some of the roles of existing board members in June 2006 – Alan Russell took over from George Howie as Trust Chair, with support from Tom Phillips as Vice-Chair, and James Proctor became Trust Secretary. The handover of his previous Membership Secretary duties to Blair White will be complete after this AGM with the membership renewals process.

Neil Langtree (our previous Minutes Secretary) stood down from the Board in February but remains a committed ordinary member of the Trust.

At this AGM, Alan Russell, James Proctor and George Howie are standing down by rotation. Nominations for the Trust Board close on Friday 19 October. If there are any comments in this regard or assistance required members should get in touch by the usual methods.

If any election is required documents will be posted on the week beginning 22 October.


Auditor’s Report and Election
The accounts were presented by Graeme Condie and passed unanimously by the members present.

The appointment of auditors Mackenzie & Co for the next term was unanimously passed.


The Trust’s Forward Plan
The Trust Board held an away day in August to identify possible activities over the next year, and a brief report of this session was given.

Our plan is to get the schedule of AGMs back on track by this time next year, and after 18 months with no AGM we will have three in the space of 12 months – the 2006/07 accounts are almost ready now and we intend to have our 2007 AGM in March, and then we will have the 2008 AGM in September (a few months after the end of our financial year).

An open evening is planned for later this year to discuss topics of interest to our members; details will be circulated shortly. The possibility of repeating the 2003 survey of the wider fanbase was raised, the costs and benefits of this would be investigated with a view to conduct this survey early in the new year.

As a result of this planning session our planned timeline is:

• October / November – Membership renewals
• Late November – Trust members’ evening
• January ’08 – possible fans’ survey
• March ’08 – 2007 AGM
• May / June ’08 – RRFC Board Representative election
• September ’08 – 2008 AGM

AOCB
The top table (Alan Russell, Graeme Condie and James Proctor) along with RRFC Board member Alex Condie closed the formal business of the AGM by answering questions from the floor. Two of the main discussion points were:

• How do we get the message across to Trust members and the fanbase in general that things are still not perfect, we’re not in a crisis situation but not everything in the garden is rosy either – but a lot of people don’t know where we are between those two things
• The structure of the club is unnecessarily complex and it’s difficult to get our heads round who owns what, and what issues this presents

RRFC Chairman Dave Somerville then joined for the final hour of the AGM to answer questions about the football club in general. The AGM closed at 21:00.


Date of next AGM : March 2008 – Actual date, time and venue to be confirmed nearer the time.