What is a Football Supporters Trust?
A supporters trust is a not for profit, democratic organization that is run by football supporters for football supporters, committed to strengthening the influence of supporters over the running of the club they support.
Lead by a small group of elected volunteers, they are accountable and subject to recall by the membership. The elected volunteers are board members steering the organization to work with the football club, committed to strengthening the voice for supporters in the decision-making process at a club and strengthening the links between the club and the community it serves.
In England, Wales and Scotland, there are approximately 140 supporters trusts, with as many as 110 that have a financial stake in their club and as many as 40 clubs in the pyramid that are owned by supporters. Three of them are in the EFL: Exeter City, AFC Wimbledon and Newport County.
The vast majority of supporters Trusts were formed out of crisis, including ours. You can read the history of how we were formed here.
How does it work?
Supporters’ Trusts are constituted as Community Benefit Societies (CBS), a form of Co-operative that operates under a one-member one-vote principle.
CBS's are registered with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and any changes to the rules must be approved by the members and only become effective once the FCA has agreed to them, checking they are in keeping with the spirit of the organisation.
The members own all assets and liabilities collectively.
Under FCA rules the Trust must remain solvent if it is to continue to legally exist. Trusts are non-profit making organisations any profit made is either kept as reserves or reinvested to meet its objectives. It will never take the form of a dividend to members.
Bantams Supporters Trust was formed as Bradford City Supporters Trust in 2002 as an interim board before formal elections in 2004 in accordance with these rules and guidelines. Our registration number is 29446R.
As a CBS, we meet the requirements of the Football Supporters Association (FSA) as an affiliate member, as do all other supporters trusts, and provides trusts with model rules that fall within the CBS.
Membership
Our rules say that because members are effectively shareholder, a minimum share or cost to a member is £1 and all members paying a contribution are entitled to vote – one member one vote.
In previous years we had a free membership to encourage members to join and had a patron membership for those that wanted to contribute financially. This was only on a temporary basis, and at our 2023 AGM we reverted back charging from £1 as a minimum.
There is a free email membership but are not entitled to vote, All members receive our email news and surveys, and we regularly share them on social media
You can see our FSA Model rules (2022) here.
Can a supporters travel group have membership of the trust?
Yes, Supporters’ travel clubs will be able to have affiliation membership of the trust. We welcome contact with all supporters groups. Members of all supporter groups are encouraged to join our Trust as our purpose is distinctly different.
Our finances
All our income is modest and comes entirely from its’ membership. Much of our income goes towards operational costs such as maintaining the website and our CRM database, where we can email our news articles and surveys directly to our members. Our income goes on investment on our merchandise that we sell in the main stand concourse, and also on sponsoring players.
Ways in which the FSA help supporters Trusts
The FSA, national organization run by fans for the fans, campaigns for the interests of football supporters in England and Wales. It promotes the campaigns that supporters trusts and other fans’ bodies are involved in at their clubs, whether that is about bringing ticket prices down at a specific club or promoting a community initiative led by a trust and club working together. It can also highlight issues where the fan engagement commitment from a club isn’t there or where the owner of a club has mismanaged the finances and relations with s trust has turned sour.
All professional football club are obliged to engage in consultation with supporters through EFL and Premier League regulation, and a supporters’ trust would provide a formal mechanism.
Bantams Supporters has a direct relationship with our Club through the formal mechanism called structured dialogue.
The FSA works with the EFL to promote good fan engagement practices and recently worked on guidance for clubs to involve supporters’ trusts and other supporters groups to come up with a ‘fan engagement plan’ on a yearly basis.
Included in the guidance pack drawn up by the FSA are various engagement models such as ‘Fan Advisory Boards’, ‘fan consultation groups’, ‘structured dialogue’ and others.
It also includes formal engagement structures around how clubs and supporters should meet, how many times they should meet, numbers and who should be there, inclusivity and diversity, independent democratic bodies such as supporters trust etc.
There is some guidance to some of this on the FSA’s website here.
Training
The FSA also provides training to supporters trusts to develop its board members, its polices, and specialist projects – this could involve developing a community project or getting a club listed as an Asset of Community Value (ACV as we did earlier this year, see here.
EFL Networks
The FSA also has support through its’ EFL Network group which meets on a monthly basis with an agenda guided by trust reps with guest speakers on a whole variety of projects promoting fan engagement, getting young people interested in supporters trusts, diversity projects, campaigns to encourage clubs to promote carbon footprint reduction, and regular updates on the Football Governance Bill.
What do supporters trusts do?
The bread and butter of any supporters Trust is engaging with members and meeting with the club they support.
One topic Trusts don’t get involved in with a club is about team performances, players and managers.
The conversations revolve around supporter experience on a match day, improvements to the facilities, accesibility, inclusivity, diversity, carbon footprint, foodprices, ticket prices, season tickets, community activities, restorative practice, policing and stewarding as well as well national campaigns FSA are invoved in to improve the interests of supporters, the health of our football clubs and of course the hot topic of fan engagement, and there is so much to improve there at City!
All supporters trusts are at different stages of development, some have small membership bases, perhaps with very active layer of a volunteer board, some have medum to large membership base and a small active volunteer board. Much of this depends upon the relationship a trust board has with the club they support. The better a relationship it has with a club, it is more likely there is a better understanding of what a trust does from the wider club fan-base and membership of the Trust.
Some more established trust have a community arm whereby many community projects and fundraising comes from, helping to fund club supported and fan-popular charities.
Almost all post on social media and some have a physical presence at football matches selling merchandise or some have Trust lottery schemes. Some even run coaches to away matches.
What is the differeence between the Supporters Board and the Trust?
The Trust is completely independent of our Club. Whilst the the Supporters Board has a certain amount of autonomy as a group of football fans with its own constitution, it is still an extention of the Club’s consultation process and connection between the Club and the fans.
Until two season’s ago or maybe three, the Trust had a formal seat on the Supporters Board. This was at a time when all the representatives represented a greater spread of the supporter-base than it does today, where the members of the board are there as individuals.
In the ever changing landscape of fan engagement many supporters boards are now Fan Advisory Boards and it is the case that the FAB model, the FSA recommends a seat should be for its’ affiliated supporters’ group – a supporters trust. You can see more on this here.
The other difference is that the SB is more focused on Club matters, and whilst the Trust will also be focused on the same, it also has a wider national remit that may affect the Club’ business motivations. As we know, no club is an island, there are 72 EFL clubs all in competition for prize money
Getting involved with the Trust
We at Bantams Supporters Trust would like to do so much more than what we are doing currently.
The Trust Board meets once a month, and ordinary members can come and see what it is like as an experience. We meet every third Wednesday of the month on an evening between 7 and 9 at Jacobs Well in the city centre, near the Interchange, and this ‘open door’ policy has had some positive effect.
Members can be co-opted onto the board at any time of the year and stand for election at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) usually in November, 6 months after our years’ end on the 30th May.
The Trust Board has a Chair, Vice Chair, Treasure and ‘Acting’ Secretary. We also have a Website Administrator. We would like an Equality Officer and Women’s Officer, people who are good at sharing our posts, and writing articles about the matches – previews and post match reviews.
Sub-Groups can be formed to focus on specific issues, projects that we would like to develop and / or within the trust, enabling cross representation where we have members that are members of other groups for example and open dialogue.
Ultimately we are all volunteers, we encourage as many members as possible to assist with our work. It is important that more supporters join us. The bigger our support base is, the bigger voice we potentially have. The more members get involved, the more we can achieve and have a greater presence.
Join here today, and don’t forget to contribute financially to support us. Remember, your membership sub allows you to be able to vote.
