This week marked the one-year anniversary of the #BuyTheBuds campaign being concluded, meaning the future ownership of St Mirren will lie in the hands of the people who will care for it most – you.
In that time the SMISA committee have been busy. Sometimes it’s easy to forget what has been achieved, so we thought it was worth recapping on what SMISA has done in that time.
- created a process where member vote on where to spend the £2 portions of your membership, a scheme unlike anything else we know of at other Scottish clubs;
- part-funded the club’s wheelchair platform, helping bring back gold status to the Paisley 2021 Stadium, and giving St MIrren disabled facilities rated among the best in the country;
- made additional funds available to the manager when the club was teetering on the brink of relegation in January, helping fuel an incredible last three months of the season;
- had the first-ever election for a SMISA member to sit on the St Mirren board. David Nicol has done a great job over the last year as the link between the club and SMISA, while making sure fan issues are considered in club decision-making. He can be reached via [email protected];
- held events including a party for the fans to celebrate the buyout, a Millennium champions night with Tom Hendrie and the 1999/2000 squad, and a quiz night with Jack Ross and some of his players.
- helped set up a volunteer squad which has cleaned every seat in the stadium ahead of the new season;
- loaned the club money to repair the undersoil heating;
- helped get an issue of The Saint newspaper up and running and distributed it to fans;
- purchased 24 season tickets to invite local community groups along to games free of charge;
- sponsored a local youth football team (Renfrew Juniors 2005s) for a year, and donated money to Renfrewshire Foodbank;
- set a series of objectives for the next year which include increasing our member numbers, creating a regular place for members to meet the committee, setting up more regular meetings with club directors, and increasing the diversity of the committee to include more female members.
There is still much to be done but we start our second year in a strong position and have high hopes for the future of SMISA and St Mirren, on and off the park.
Of course to see through the long-term goal of fan ownership we need as many members as possible.
If you have Saints-supporting friends or relatives who haven’t yet signed up, tell them what we have achieved and be proud of your role in making it happen.
You can check out our video of our social media highlights from 2016/7 which tells the story of #BuyTheBuds, at the top of the article.