Earlier this month we asked our members to consider a proposal to use the £2 spend ballots for July and October in one go.

This was to create a pot we expect to be in the region of £14,800 that would provide general financial support to the St Mirren youth academy to allow them to continue operating at full strength and to also purchase some vital training equipment.

You have chosen to support this overwhelmingly, with more than 98% (618) of the 629 members who voted giving the proposal their backing.

Our next £2 ballot will now take place in January 2021. Any members wishing to forward projects for consideration can do so by email at [email protected]

This month we are proposing something a bit different for members to consider by suggesting using both this spend and the October spend in one go.

The project we are putting to the vote is to provide general financial support to the St Mirren youth academy.

The effects of Covid-19 have impacted football in many ways with nearly every club forced into making cost savings to try to offset the loss of revenue.

Some clubs have chosen to reduce or mothball their academies but we at SMISA believe a strong, thriving youth academy is vital to St Mirren’s present and future.

In a previous survey of SMISA members, you also indicated that supporting youth development ought to be the priority for the £2 spend sums.

With the club working towards attaining elite status within the Scottish FA’s Project Brave structure, this fund would enable the academy to continue operating at full strength and to also purchase some much-needed training equipment.

To that end we are proposing using the £7400 in the July pot now, and then in October the sum available (likely to be similar), to help head of youth Allan McManus and his team at Ralston.

Committing two pots in one go will give the academy team a bit more certainty over budgets and the ability to plan ahead during a time of financial uncertainty.

Should the project not receive majority backing the sums will remain in the pot for possible use at a future date.

Voting via Very Connect at   https://tinyurl.com/yd6j8qow   will be open until July 17.

If you have any questions about this or anything else please get in touch via [email protected].

Earlier this year members voted in favour of a proposal that will now see majority fan ownership of the club delivered by the end of 2021. Under the terms of that, SMISA is entitled to appoint a second director to the club board during the three-way interim ownership period.

David Nicol, a member of the club board since 2016, agreed to continue in post as the second representative until the SMISA committee was able to source, interview and nominate his replacement.

We have now started that process and, to that end, would like to extend an invite to anyone in the membership who may be interested in representing SMISA on the club board to get in touch.

One of the terms of the deal agreed by members earlier this year was for the procedure for choosing club directors to be amended from that of previous years to reflect the growing significance of the position as we move towards majority ownership.

We have developed a formal recruitment process involving an application form and interview for shortlisted candidates to establish the best person for the job based on their skills and experience.

Once the committee has settled on their preferred candidate, members will then be given the opportunity to either accept or reject them.

Any member contacting us to express an interest in the role will be sent an information pack with more details about what the position will entail as well as an application form.

At least one of the SMISA-appointed directors on the club board - David Riley is the other – will also be available for an informal video chat to answer any other questions members may have.

Anyone interested in this opportunity should contact [email protected] by Friday July 10.  

With it not being possible to hold our SMISA Annual General Meeting in person for the time being due to the ongoing COVID-19 restrictions, we decided to conduct our AGM by electronic means this year instead.

We invited all members to cast a vote (yes or no) on each of the following matters. In total we received 460 votes, with members giving their positive backing to each item.

The details are included below:

Thank you to all members who took the time to vote.

We also invited any members who would have liked to have raised a question at the AGM to do so by email and we thank those who did. Responses can be accessed HERE. 

We will look into the possibility of holding an actual Q&A member meeting at some point in the future once government restrictions are lifted.

Finally, we realise these are very challenging times for many people and so we would like to thank the SMISA membership for your ongoing support.

None of us know yet what will happen with Scottish football going forward but be assured we will endeavour to keep you updated with developments whenever we can.

Many thanks,

The SMISA Committee

Members will be aware that due to the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions, we have been unable to hold SMISA's Annual General Meeting in its normal format this year, and are conducting our AGM business virtually instead. The following review of the year is a written summary of what we would have presented at the meeting, in three sections – 2019/20 Highlights, Finance and Membership, and Annual Objectives:

2019/20 HIGHLIGHTS

For much of the past year our focus was on the proposals to deliver majority fan ownership of St Mirren earlier than planned by working in partnership with Kibble.

That deal was the best part of a year in the making, with our first meeting with Kibble in April of last year. At that stage we agreed to enter into discussions and a SMISA sub-committee was formed to work with the club and Kibble to develop an idea of what any deal might look like.

By summer we had firmed up the principles of that into something we felt would work and our workload peaked over the winter as we finalised the details of the legal agreement and how to communicate the proposals to members. We put those plans to you because we believe they offer the best possible future for our club and we are delighted almost 92% of members backed them during that vote in February.

While lockdown has obviously made a big impact on club operations over the past month, we hope to be able to keep working with the club and Kibble to help deliver on the benefits of the new ownership structure over the coming year.

The focus on the Kibble deal did inevitably divert our focus from other areas. However there were a number of other key achievements, including:

- our members made several great projects possible through the £2 pot – including a tactics screen and drone for the first team and academy, funding for Paisley Panda’s pre-match children’s entertainment, support for the St Mirren Charitable Foundation’s Festive Friends Christmas meal, new strips for St Mirren Women’s team, funding some of the club’s youth teams to travel to a tournament in England, and another year of SMISA’s popular community season ticket scheme.

- we ran a well-attended and well-received meet-the-manager night which saw Jim Goodwin and Lee Sharp take questions from fans;

- our member benefit scheme continued, with groups of SMISA members winning draws to enjoy pre-match hospitality, sit in the directors' guest lounge, and attend other club events;

- we also worked with a local artists to unveil six murals celebrating previous trophy wins which have proved to be popular additions to the stadium interior;

FINANCE AND MEMBERSHIP

The image below shows some of our key numbers for the year.

The top line shows how our share-purchase pot has grown over the past year. The Kibble deal means we now only need £331k to acquire the majority stake in the club at end 2021. We plan to also have a sizeable cash reserve (ideally, around £100,000) at that time, which we are on track to have.

But there is a new ‘known unknown’ in that we can’t predict the impact of the financial hardship caused by Covd-19 on membership numbers. We will obviously monitor that closely over the coming months and update our projections accordingly.

In terms of membership numbers, you can see the rate of leavers and joiners for the past 18 months above. While the overall trend is downwards, we have always budgeted for this, and the level of drop-off is well within our projections.

Members will recall in 2018 we used money from the share-purchase pot to fund our £50,000 contribution to the new astrograss surface at the club’s training ground at Ralston, to be paid back at £5,000 per quarter from the £2 pot. The last payment will be in April, meaning the £2 pot will be back in excess of £7,000 per quarter from July onwards.

The last line shows the legal expenses incurred while negotiating the legal agreement underpinning the Kibble deal. It was essential we had proper legal advice on this. As our financial year end is November 2019, this expense will feature in next year’s accounts rather than the ones considered as part of the AGM, but we wanted to make members aware of this additional expense.

The other major update around membership is the VeryConnect membership portal is now up and running. This means all our member data, emails, events and ballots are now in one place, and using the one database. This has seen a huge reduction in the admin workload of the committee and means our behind-the-scenes operations have been significantly professionalised.

The vote on the Kibble deal saw a big increase in registrations on the platform but there still remains around 200 members who haven’t yet done so, despite the many reminders we have issued. Those members are unable to vote in ballots or book places at events. If you are one of them and need help to register, please email us at [email protected]

ANNUAL OBJECTIVES

Each year at the AGM we report on how we have performed against our objectives for the previous year and on what objectives we have set for the year ahead. Our 2019 objectives and results were:

1. Review process for electing a SMISA member to the SMFC board – this one has been overtaken by events in that the terms of the Kibble deal have changed SMISA’s position to one where we will no longer elect a single representative but the committee will directly appoint the majority of the club board. One of our objectives for next year is to put in place a process for this.

2. Membership strategy including junior membership scheme – work has taken place on this, with plans developed for a junior membership scheme, however this was put on hold while we focused on the Kibble deal. We will look again at this in 2020.

3. Complete installation of the new online membership platform – as detailed above, we rolled out VeryConnect to members in September.

4. Develop a SMISA community strategy – this objective was refocused to concentrate on one project – helping the club reduce its carbon footprint and increase recycling. A sub-group of SMISA committee members researched and produced a detailed report for the club board with costed solutions including installing separate waste and recycling bins around the stadium. When implemented we believe St Mirren will be the first club in Scotland to do this.

Our objectives for the upcoming year are as follows:

1. Formalise the process for recruiting SMISA representatives to the SMFC board, and appoint our next representative by summer 2020 – SMISA’s future role will be to appoint people with the skills and expertise to take the club forward. To do that we need to create a job description, person spec and interview process, and consider how to attract candidates of suitable quality.

2. Continue to develop membership strategy - ongoing effort is needed to attract new members and retain existing ones. As part of that we will revisit the plans for a junior membership scheme to hopefully bring though the next generation of SMISA members.

3. Help the club to further reduce its carbon footprint – we will continue working with the club to bring in the new stadium recycling scheme, and identify other areas for improvement around minimising waste and improving energy efficiency.

4. Produce a revised structure of membership fees and benefits, to be ready when SMISA secures majority stake in the club – the Kibble deal has brough forward fan ownership by several years and means key questions about our future operation need considered sooner than expected. Key among them is what our membership fees should be, how that income will be spent, and what benefits will be available to members in return. We will review our options around all these points.

While we appreciate football may not be at the forefront of everyone’s minds at the moment, we are required to update you on plans for SMISA’s Annual General Meeting. As you know, our planned AGM on 28 March was cancelled.

As it will clearly not be possible to hold an actual meeting for some time due to the ongoing COVID-19 restrictions, and since there are formal business matters which require member approval in the meantime, we have decided to conduct our AGM by electronic means this year instead.

Supporters Direct Scotland have confirmed that this is in accordance with our rules. Many other organisations whose AGM is due are using the same solution. That means we are inviting members to vote remotely via a VeryConnect ballot on all the formal AGM business.

We have also written a review of the year covering the topics we would have presented on at the AGM, namely: our 2019/20 highlights; an update on our finances and membership numbers; how we performed against last year’s objectives, and a look forward to the ones we have set for this year;

We invite all members who would have liked to ask any questions of us at the AGM to do so by email via [email protected]. We will respond to the sender by email but will also publish the questions and answers in due course for all members to see.

We will look into the possibility of holding an actual Q&A member meeting at some point in the future once the government restrictions are lifted.

Formal business

We invite all members to cast a vote (yes or no) on each of the following matters:

1) to accept the Annual Accounts for the financial year ending November 2019. A copy of the accounts has been emailed to members.

2) to disapply the need for a full audit of next year's accounts by instead appointing an Independent Examiner. (as an organisation with total revenue of less than £250,000, we are not obliged by law to have our accounts subject to a full audit, just a review by a suitable Independent Examiner. But members must give their approval each year for this to happen.)

3) Three of the current committee are required to step down and stand for re-election. As no other members have put themselves forward for election, we are required to hold an affirmative ballot, where members are asked to either accept or reject each of the three candidates – George Adam, Kenny Docherty and Alan Quinn. You can read candidate statements from the three on our website.

4) this year we have also proposed a number of changes to SMISA’s constitution, to better reflect our situation as we move closer to majority fan ownership. A copy of the constitution with the proposed updates marked in red, and a brief explanation of the rationale behind them can be read here.

The voting is open now and will close on Friday 15th May. Members can vote now via VeryConnect. The link was emailed to you on Friday 1 May, and a reminder issued on Friday 8 May. If you have any questions about any of the items listed above you would like to ask before you vote, please email us via [email protected]

This month we had £2500 available in the pot and gave members two options to vote on.

The first was to provide financial support to the St Mirren Charitable Foundation who continue to work diligently to help the vulnerable in our community during this difficult time. The second option was to keep the money for possible use at a later date.

Around 68% of those who voted (477 out of 699 votes cast) chose to support Gayle Brannigan and her dedicated team of workers at the Foundation at this time.

Members can also still make individual contributions to the Foundation should they wish to via JustGiving.

Our next quarterly ballot will take place in July when the pot will be restored to around £7000. Any members wishing to forward projects for consideration can do so by email at [email protected]

A lot has changed in the world since our previous update and we hope you are all staying healthy and coping the best you can in difficult circumstances. Although there is sadly no football on the pitch to occupy us for the time being, the SMISA committee is still working away as normal behind the scenes.

Social distancing may mean we can no longer meet in person but we have remained in touch through email, group chat and even held our first-ever committee video call!

We are also still in regular dialogue with the St Mirren board via our two SMISA club directors, David Nicol and David Riley, who have provided an update for members below. 

We will endeavour to keep you as informed the best we can as events progress, either through emails like this one or on our website and social media channels.
April £2 spend ballot

This month we have £2500 available in the pot and two options for members to vote on. The first option is to provide financial support to the St Mirren Charitable Foundation who continue to carry out sterling work in our community.

The money would help chief executive Gayle Brannigan and her team continue to deliver essential community outreach initiatives and services during this time.
These include providing online support to groups through You Tube and Zoom educational seminars and workouts, and also daily support via What’s App groups and one-to-one phone calls.

The Foundation is also working with partner organisations within Renfrewshire to redistribute essential food and hygiene products to vulnerable individuals and families who are most in need.

The second option is to keep the money for possible use at a later date. The club is thankfully on relatively solid financial footing at the moment but there is obviously great uncertainty ahead for everyone.

As we move towards our stated aim of becoming majority owners of St Mirren by the end of 2021, members can vote to hold over this quarter’s money for a time when there may be greater need for it. Voting will close on April 21.

In the meantime, members can also make individual contributions to the Foundation now should they wish to through their JustGiving page.

This month we also made the final instalment of our contribution to the cost of the new artificial pitch at the Ralston training ground. This means the July £2 Spend will be restored to around £7000.

Club directors’ update (from David Riley and David Nicol)

The club’s number one priority will always be the safety and well-being of our staff and players. We are well-positioned to weather the crisis due to sensible sustainable management by this board and the previous board.

Obviously we don't know how long this crisis will continue for but the board is continuing to talk almost every day to ensure the club is reacting appropriately to what is a very fluid situation.

We want to pay particular tribute to the work of the Charitable Foundation and Street Stuff for continuing to support the community during this difficult period. We also want to pay tribute to our media man James Hunter for producing some wonderful content for all of us missing our football fix. As always we will do our best to keep the members – and the support as a whole – updated via news on www.stmirren.com.

Virtual AGM

Having had to unfortunately cancel our proposed AGM on March 28 due to the growing Covid-19 threat, we are now working towards hosting an online process that would give members the chance to vote on matters as they would at a traditional AGM.

Details will follow on how that will work in the coming weeks. In the meantime if you have any questions about this or anything else please get in touch via [email protected].