There’s now just one week to go until we complete our purchase of the majority shareholding in the club, a historic moment allowing you to safeguard the future of your club.
But before we get there, we have a few items of news to update you on:
Future finance model voting results
We wrote to members at the end of June with details of our proposals for how future SMISA income will be spent, and invited members to vote on whether to approve this. Voting was as follows:
YES – 547 votes (97%) / NO – 17 votes (3%). Total votes – 564.
Thanks to everyone who voted. Full details of the model are in this link:
To summarise, your future membership fees will (after SMISA costs) be spent as follows:
- 50% will be banked and added to our cash reserve;
- 30% will be reserved for the club’s youth academy;
- 10% will go to a ‘club pot’, for club-related projects as voted on by members;
- 10% will go direct to the St Mirren Charitable Foundation.
This model means a strong SMISA will lead to a strong St Mirren – the more of us there are, the more we can do to help take our club forward and invest in its long-term future.
New membership fees and benefits package
Another key issue we looked at in recent months is what SMISA’s membership fees and benefits package should be once the shares are bought.
Put simply, fan ownership was only possible because of the incredible commitment of our near-1,200 membership.
So we want to thank you for your loyalty by offering the chance of some match-day experience and money-can’t-buy rewards aimed at bringing you closer to the club once you own it.
You can see the full table of benefits on our website here.
To summarise, all Standard (£12-per-month) members will get the following additional benefits:
- entered into a series of draws to win a day out at club matchday hospitality
- the chance to win a seat on a SMISA table at club events (such as the Player of the Year dinner)
- the chance to win a place on tours of the stadium, training ground, or to watch a training session
- priority access to other SMISA-run events (such as online manager and player Q&As)
All Plus (£25-per-month) and Premium members (who paid a one-off fee for ten years of membership at the start of the Buy The Buds campaign) get the following, in addition to the above:
- plus-member-only draws for match-day hospitality and club events (as we have much fewer Plus members than Standard, this means a much better chance of winning a seat);
- the chance to watch a game from the directors’ guest lounge;
- the chance to win a lunch with the team manager/captain/players;
- occasional piece of SMISA memorabilia;
As part of the new structure we have also added a new Entry (£5-per-month) membership category. This new tier carries no additional benefits but does include a vote on all SMISA issues.
We hope this new membership tier will make SMISA more inclusive and help us attract new members for whom cost may have been a barrier, or to encourage ex-members who left for financial reasons to return.
Directors' Q&A
The two SMISA-appointed St Mirren directors John Needham and David Riley provide an update on the latest from the club and look ahead to the imminent fan takeover in the latest edition of our directors' Q&A. You can read it here.
July £2 spend
The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed there has been no quarterly £2 spend for July.
Given our extra workload this month as we prepare for the share purchase, we decided to roll this quarter’s spend over into the new club pot, which is, in effect, the successor to the £2 pot.
We are currently developing plans for a significant project which will allow the members to put their stamp on the SMISA Stadium in future, and hope to reveal these later in the year.