Welcome to Jack
The club this week confirmed the appointment of Jack Ross as the new manager and the SMISA committee would like to welcome Jack to the Paisley 2021 Stadium.
SMISA's man on the club board David Nicol was obviously involved in the recruitment process and we know Jack really impressed the board with his vision for the club and that they see him as a good fit for their long-term plans.
It was also encouraging to see him talking up the benefits of fan ownership in his interview on the official website today - for those who missed it, there's a good insight into his approach here.
It goes without saying supporting St Mirren hasn't been easy over the past few years and maybe the atmosphere hasn't always helped matters on the pitch.
But we now have a new manager, a new board and a new opportunity to move forward as a club. We hope all members and fans will give their full support to Jack and the team, and hopefully better days lie ahead.
Latest member numbers
Current membership numbers as of the start of October are 1344. That is slightly down on last month but we always expected that over time numbers would tail off and we budgeted on that basis.
Of the handful of cancellations, the feedback we have from those who wrote to us is that their reasons were purely down to finance.
We have been given no indication anybody has left because they are unhappy with the job we are doing or because of results on the park.
As always we would stress the work to take the club into majority fan ownership is a long-term project which will take years to save up for, and that means we need a long-term commitment from as many members to stay the course as possible.
First £2 pot spend
One of the key ways we will be keeping everybody engaged is by spending the £2 proportion of your monthly membership, which we plan to do every three months.
We wrote to you last week with the results of the survey we ran on your priorities and the feedback from that will be used to inform future spending decisions.
As we explained in that update, the bulk of the £8,500 raised through the first three months of #BuyTheBuds money will be used to make up the shortfall (estimated at £6,000-7,000) on the club’s planned disabled platform at the back of the main stand.
But we asked the members to vote on where the remainder of the money should go – either into youth development or to be left in the pot for future investment.
Voting closed earlier in the week and the results were as follows:
Option 1 (Spend on Youth Academy)
43% 325
Option 2 (Carry funds over)
57% 430
Director election
As you know, one of the key points of the #BuyTheBuds campaign is that you the members can elect one of your own to represent you on the club board.
SMISA committee member David Nicol has been doing this role for the past couple of months but it was always our plan to hold an election to be concluded before the club AGM at the end of the year.
We have now produced a set of election rules, along with a timetable detailing how the process will unfold over the next couple of months.
The first stage of that will be a nomination period where any interested members will be able to put themselves forward to go on to the ballot.
The full set of election rules, including details of how to nominate yourself, will be sent out later this week, along with a job description outlining the expected duties of a SMISA rep on the club board.
Volunteer call to action
Something both the SMISA committee and Gordon Scott are keen to investigate is how to harness the membership’s collective power to volunteer on projects which will help the club and community.
The club have approached us with a couple of projects which they need some extra pairs of hands on and have asked if SMISA members are willing to provide them.
The first project involves the possibility of the club installing an electronic advertising billboard on land at the north end of the stadium, which could be a very lucrative income stream.
However the companies who operate these boards will only install one if they know there will be a certain amount of traffic at that location each day.
So to find out if this idea is feasible, the club is looking for a number of volunteers to work in shifts to help electronically count the vehicles at that spot over the course of one day (note - this is likely to be a weekday).
If you were able to spare an hour or two and would like to register an interest in this or any future volunteering opportunities, please send an email to [email protected] and we will be in touch with more detail when we have it.
If there was sufficient interest, this could be the start of a SMISA volunteer pool of people who use their collective skills to work on various club and community projects as and when required.
This could be ideal for members who are perhaps retired and willing to give up some time to, or those who are looking for something to add to their CV.