It’s now time for the latest quarterly spend from the members pot – formed from the £2 portion of your monthly memberships. This is of course separate from the £10 portion of your memberships, which is currently being used to fund the share purchase
The committee has considered a number of ideas and costed and put forward a handful of projects we feel are a good use of the money and in line with our objectives – but as always the members will decide if they happen.
As in previous months, we are asking members to vote yes or no to three options, to be decided by simple majority. Should an option be rejected, the money will stay in the pot.
The £2s add up to just over £8,000 per quarter. The three projects suggested here total just over £7,000, meaning a minimum of £1,000 will be left over in this vote for future use.
Vote 1) – club sports scientist and analyst (£3,200)
Members will remember voting in July to fund a sports scientist to work with St Mirren’s first-team and academy squads, plus extra hours for the club’s analyst to work with data from a GPS tracking system measuring player performance in training.
This was not something the club had budgeted for at the start of the season but SMISA put it to our members after we were approached by Jack Ross, who felt this additional investment would hugely benefit him and the players.
Results to date would back that up and suggest SMISA’s investment has really helped boost the team.
In the summer we agreed to pay £5,200 to fund the £200 per week cost (£150pw for the sports scientist and £50pw for the analyst) for 26 weeks from August until the end of January.
We would now like to give members the option to keep funding this post until the end of the season – another 13 weeks would cover us from February until late May, covering the potential play-off dates.
Vote 2) – St Mirren Women’s section (£2,055)
Members will also be aware St Mirren have now launched a women’s section, who will take to the field for the 2018 SWFL Division 2 West season in the next couple of months.
SMISA helped bring the individuals together with St Mirren and are keen to play a role in helping grow this new section of the club and with it, the St Mirren family.
However the ladies have a large fundraising burden to meet their significant start-up costs, and we believe SMISA can help with some of that. We are asking members to vote on £2,055 funding for the team, broken down as follows:
- a set of away kits and other teamwear (£1,200). These will be the same Joma strips as the men’s team but will carry a SMISA logo as shirt sponsors, helping promote the trust;
- our investment would also cover the team’s registration fees for the season (£455), training equipment (£300), and coach’s tracksuit and training kit (£100).
The ladies are looking for other sources of funds and anybody who could help can contact them via Twitter on @stmirrenwfc.
Vote 3) – funding for pre-match family entertainment (£1,750)
St Mirren’s two Supporter Liasion Officers – SMISA’s John White and Fans Council member John Allison – have been working with Paisley Panda himself on a new initiative aimed at adding to the matchday experience for young fans.
They would like to bring children’s performers and other live entertainment into the Family Stand and stadium grounds from 2pm on matchdays and encourage families to get there early to enjoy the atmosphere and make a day of it. We believe having more young fans at games can only be good for the club in the short and long term.
This would include the following – two children’s entertainers per game (ie puppet show, magic show, face painting, balloon modelling or a clown), live musicians, and 500 cardboard clappers per game (similar to the ones Leicester City use) to be handed out to let the kids create some noise.
The two Johns have costed this and proposed SMISA fund the above for five home league games between now and the end of the season. We are asking members to approve a spend of £1,750 to cover the costs.
SMISA members are being asked to vote via secure online ballot. Voting will run until Sunday 21 January. As always, we welcome any ideas and feedback on [email protected].