All votes are now in for the October £2 spend ballot, and we can reveal the results as follows:

Option 1 – new goals for the St Mirren youth academy – 334 votes (40%)

Option 3 – SMFC Community Trust (Xmas meal and Fit Fans) – 310 votes (37%)

Option 4 – none of the above – 100 votes (12%)

Option 2 – stadium hand-driers – 88 votes (11%)

Members were voting on where to spend the £3,000 available in this quarter and a reminder of the initial options is here.

That means the £3,000 will go to the youth academy for a new set of moveable 11-a-side goals.

However, while the SMFC community trust projects narrowly missed out in the vote, we would like to give SMISA members the option to still make a £500 donation towards the Christmas meal element.

This planned event will offer a festive feed at the stadium on December 25 to up to 120 elderly people from the local community who may be suffering from isolation and might not otherwise have anywhere to go.

Having a ‘follow-up’ vote is not something we have done before and we do not plan to make a habit of in future, but we considered the following as reasons to make an exception here:

- this was the closest-run £2 spend we’ve had and the most votes ever received by a project which didn’t win;

- feedback from members suggested the festive meal was the most popular of the two community trust projects, and the one the organisers were most keen for help with;

- we have over the past two years accumulated a small sum of unspent money from previous £2 ballots and has never been assigned to any project. If approved, the £500 will come from that;

- the next scheduled spend isn’t until January, so it can’t be an option in a future vote.

In order to have a simple yes/no vote and a clear outcome, we need to define a sum for you to vote on. In this instance, we chose against asking you to fully fund an option which didn’t win.

But while £500 leaves the SMFC community trust with some fundraising still to do, we felt it would be an appropriate level of support for a worthy cause. Members have been emailed with a link allowing them to vote.

We this week emailed members with details of the projects in the October £2 pot spend ballot. Here's what it said:

As with the past couple of spends, the pot for this quarter is less than the usual £8,000 – as £5,000 from this and the next few quarters has already been committed to the project to relay the astroturf at the club’s Ralston training ground, which members voted for earlier this year.

However we have recently costed a few projects which we think are suitable uses for the remaining £3,000 and which give you a breadth of choice. When we last surveyed our members over where you wanted your money to go, the top three categories were the club’s youth academy, improving the stadium facilities/matchday experience, and bringing the club and community closer together.

In line with that, we present the following options and ask you to pick your favourite:

Option 1 (youth academy goals) –The work to relay the pitch at Ralston is finally now under way and will be ongoing over the next few weeks. As part of that the club would like to upgrade the near-decade-old goals on the new pitch if they can, and head of youth Allan McManus asked if SMISA members would be willing to fund a set of professional-standard goals. The goals would be moveable, which are more expensive than fixed ones, but which would give our various youth teams flexibility in pitch set-up.

Option 2 (stadium hand-driers) – A suggestion we received a while back from a member was whether SMISA could pay to replace the hand-driers in the stadium, which we are sure many of you will have noticed are of poor quality.

This work has now been costed and the club installed one new test drier (its silver if you want to try it) in the men’s toilets in the West Stand (under W2 and W3), which – although it only blows cold air – is stronger than the existing ones. £3,000 would allow us to replace 20 of the 26 hand-driers around the stadium (£100 per drier plus £1,000 install). The priority would be the ones in the home stands.

Option 3 (SMFC Community Trust – Xmas meal and Fit Fans) – a few years ago the club set up the SMFC Community Trust as a charitable organisation aimed at helping the local community. While the trust has been largely dormant, the club have now hired Gayle Brannigan to get it up and running, and she gave us a proposal for how £3,000 from SMISA’s £2 pot could help two of her projects.

The first is Festive Friends – a free Christmas dinner for local elderly residents who are isolated and might otherwise spend Christmas alone, in the 1877 Club at the stadium on December 25, in partnership with the Salvation Army. Gayle is currently £1,750 short of what she needs to run this event.

The remaining £1,250 would go towards a programme of Football Fans in Training (FFIT) for Saints fans (Link to https://dev.ffit.org.uk/). This is a Scotland-wide scheme intended to promote healthy living and weight loss, targeted at footfall fans, and using club facilities. Our money would go on marketing costs, fitness equipment, coaches tracksuits and FFIT t-shirts for the 40 participants.

Option 4 (none of the above) – This would keep the full £3,000 in the £2 pot, meaning it would be available for future projects if needed.

Any SMISA members interested in being the voice of St Mirren fans in the club boardroom are being invited to come forward.

Under the terms of the #BuyTheBuds deal, SMISA members are able to elect one of their own to serve as a fan representative on the club board.

SMISA committee member David Nicol was elected to this role in November 2016, but as his two-year term is coming to an end, we are now inviting members to put themselves forward to run for election to serve on the board for the next two years.

The successful candidate will have a key role in the running of the club, as well as being vital to the operation of SMISA - both as the voice of the fans within the boardroom and as the link between the club and the trust.

Full information – including a job description and election rules – are available for download now, and we would advise anyone interested to read and consider them fully.

The timetable is as follows:
- Tuesday 16 October – nomination period opens
- Sunday 4 November – nomination period closes
- Monday 12 November – voting opens
- Monday 26 November – voting closes

Of course if there are questions you can contact us via [email protected]

Voting has now closed for SMISA's July £2 spend ballot and we can reveal the results below. For a reminder of the two projects, follow this link. Thanks to the 815 of you who voted. Votes were as follows:

Project one - funding for St Mirren to run two new community programmes (£1,500)
YES - 619 votes (76%) / NO - 196 (24%)

Project two - funding for pre-match entertainment around family stand (£1,500)
YES - 708 (87%) / NO - 107 (13%)

SMISA's July £2 spend ballot contains two projects on which members are being asked to vote....

In April members voted overwhelmingly in favour of a proposal to use £50,000 of SMISA money towards the relaying of the astrograss surface at the club’s training ground at Ralston, which sees SMISA become the main sponsors of the club’s youth academy for the next two years.

As explained at the time, we are funding that using £5,000 from each quarterly spend for the next eight spends (£10,000 has already been committed), meaning there will only be approximately £3,000 available to spend per quarter (rather than the usual £8,000) for the next two years.

This ballot has two projects for you to vote yes or no on. If either is rejected by the membership, the money allocated to it will stay in the £2 pot for potential future use. If you have any ideas you would like us to look into for future spends, please email [email protected]

As always, your link to the secure online ballot will follow shortly in a separate email.

Project one – Community programmes (£1,500)

The SMISA committee recently met St Mirren’s assistant head of youth Ross Paterson, who is responsible for the club’s community programmes, who presented a few ideas which SMISA funding could make happen.

These would strengthen the links between the club and community by bringing into St Mirren adults and children from Renfrewshire who could benefit from extra support. We have chosen two, which would work as follows. 

We’re on our way - lifestyle programme for adults (16s+), male and female, focusing on health and wellbeing. Weekly one-hour sessions covering diet, nutrition and physical activity, with the focus on getting fitter, losing weight, living better, achieving goals and having fun. 

Super Saints - Fun and interactive football sessions for young people with additional support needs aged six-12 years old. Weekly one-hour sessions at the St Mirren Airdome, with the focus on fun football themes, games and activities, with participation from parents/guardians/support workers.

A budget of £1,500 would allow the club to run both of the above for 20 families for 20 weeks. The money would be spent on facility hire, staff, equipment and marketing.

Project two – pre-match family entertainment (£1,500) 

You will remember last season SMISA supported a programme of pre-match entertainment in and around the family stand before home games. This was a partnership effort between different fan groups, co-ordinated by the club’s two supporter liaison officers – John White and John Allison – and Colin Bright (aka Paisley Panda), funded by us and the SMFC Fans Council. 

The aims were to get families to the ground early, improve the matchday experience, and bring new fans into the club. We saw it as an investment in St Mirren’s future – if it attracts even one new young fan who becomes an adult season ticket holder, that’s worth a lot of money to the club. 

The two Johns sought feedback on last season’s trial via social media and comments received included:

“Convinced my 4 year old to come with me. She enjoyed face painting and balloon guy.  If anything it got another adult on a seat as I wouldn’t have gone if she said no. Brings out great family atmosphere in stand” @Brydo86

“My nephew definitely enjoyed it and absolutely added to the match day experience.  Presents the club exactly as it should be- a proud family club” @GarryW1lliamson

“As one of the buskers, I loved the chance to play some music at the ground for my team.  Think it makes a great atmosphere having some party events happening.” @Cwhyte25

“My two boys have a season ticket with their Dad & they loved the pre match entertainment, they liked the face painting, meeting Panda, the balloons etc… Elizabeth Irvine

“Thought it resulted in a lovely family atmosphere in and around the ground” @John37064395

The scheme is going to run again this year and the Fans Council plan to put £1,500 towards it. We would like SMISA members to contribute the same – with a budget of £3,000 and a cost of £300 per game, the scheme could run at 10 home games this coming season.

The money would be used for – though isn’t necessarily restricted to – hiring entertainers and other attractions, such as live musicians, face painters, balloon artists, giant inflatables etc.

This month saw SMISA pass a major milestone in the #BuyTheBuds campaign – and one achieved in a way we never thought possible when we set off on the fan ownership journey.

When ourselves and Gordon Scott agreed the deal to buy the majority shareholding in St Mirren from the selling consortium in June 2016, SMISA had two years to pay our £380,000 part of that purchase. 

At the time we thought the only way we could manage this was by taking out a loan – to be paid back using member income. But with our membership numbers going much higher than the 1,000 we based our initial cash projections on, that picture started to change. 

This month we made the final payment to the former directors – and are proud to say this has been done in full, entirely through member income, without a penny of borrowing.

This was only possible because of the continued commitment of you, the members – your support has put us further ahead than we thought we’d be at this stage.

Member numbers peaked at 1,374 in summer 2016 then dropped below 1,300 after the first year (we budgeted for a 10% drop-off in year one on the advice of other fan groups we consulted with). 

But with a current membership of 1,264 we are at the same level as at the start of 2018 – and numbers have risen since the spring, with a few of you joining or re-joining in the past two months. 

With the former directors now paid off in full, the next stage is for us to save up the £615,000 needed to buy Gordon’s majority shareholding, which we have until 2026 to do. Of course for the end goal of majority fan ownership to be achieved, we need you to stay with us until then.

As pleased as we are with how things are going, the committee are working on a number of initiatives aimed at attracting more new members. 

While we build up the share purchase pot, we will continue to invest in and grow the club through the £2 pot, an original idea of ours described by Supporters Direct as ‘brilliant’ and ‘one of a kind’.

The more members we have, the greater SMISA’s ability to do that. We’ve achieved a lot over the past two years. Below is a list of what your membership made possible:

- the first-ever election to the St Mirren board of a fan representative. David Nicol continues to work hard as your voice in the boardroom and can be contacted on [email protected];

- part-funded the wheelchair platform in the main stand, giving St Mirren some of the best disabled facilities in Scotland;

- boosted the first-team budget in the dark days of January 2017 and helped fuel the incredible resurgence that sent us on our way to the Premier League;

- funded a community season ticket scheme which last season saw us bring hundreds of members of local community groups into the club and which will run again this year (see below);

- contributed to the club’s league-winning season by funding extra hours for the club’s sports scientist and match-day quality balls 

- supported the next generation of players by committing £50,000 to fund a one-third share of the new astrograss surface at Ralston, and sponsored the youth academy for the next two years;

- PLUS we helped the new St Mirren Ladies team set up, and sponsored their strips, part-funded pre-match entertainment to bring more young fans to games, sponsored a local youth football team, ran a series of fan events, funded and distributed two editions of The Saint newspaper, and helped set up a volunteer squad who have cleaned the stadium and helped with repairs at Ralston. 

We are proud of those achievements and hope you are too – we want to do more of the above in future. If you know other fans you haven’t yet joined, they can do so now via our website.

The newest additions to the St Mirren family have thanked SMISA members for kitting them out.

St Mirren Ladies FC are halfway through their first season, having played their first games at the start of the year.

And – thanks to £2,055 made available through the January vote for SMISA’s £2 pot – they have been kitted out in Joma-branded kits (the same as the men’s team) with a SMISA logo.

The funding also paid for other teamwear, training equipment, coaches kit, and the team’s registration fees for the season.

SMISA members vote every three months on where to spend the £2 portions of their monthly membership, with the £10s going into a pot which will be saved up to buy Gordon Scott’s majority shareholding and take the club into majority fan ownership.

The £2 pot is aimed at allowing our members to invest in and grow the club and its links with the community while we save up, and we felt this project was a great example of how we can do that.

The team took time out from a recent training session to show off the strips. – and were joined by SMISA’s Janette Swanson and Kenny Docherty, for the photos, taken by St Mirren photographer Allan Picken 

Head coach Kate Cooper said: "The financial support provided by SMiSA has been instrumental in developing the women's team by providing the players and staff with quality kit, and making them feel part of the St Mirren football family.

“It was important for the women's team to be identified and wearing the St Mirren brand as we train in the heart of the community of Paisley at Seedhill Sports Centre.

“It's important the people of Paisley see us in the community, know we are there and that the players are positive role models in terms of promoting the club, the St Mirren football family and also encouraging more girls in to football and sport in general. 

“Therefore the support from SMiSA has been invaluable in helping the women's team become not only visible in the community but enabling them to establish themselves within the Paisley community.”

The ladies currently sit sixth in the second division west. This is the first year of playing as a team. Some of the ladies are just starting off, having had no previous coaching. The age ranges between 16-51.

The women’s season runs from March to October with a four-week summer break in July to allow the girls a holiday as most are either attending further education/university or working full time. They train four times a week, which includes Tuesday and Thursday evenings at Seedhill and two gym sessions.

Our thanks go to Allan Picken for his help with photography.

SMISA recently handed out a special recognition award to a man who will have made hundreds of young fans' dreams come true over the past 34 years.

If in that time you have been a match mascot at the current ground or at Love Street you will know Roddy McMillan and the fantastic job he does at every home game - from welcoming the child and their family into the club and making sure they have a wonderful day they will never forget.

At one point in the 90s he also looked after the ball boys at the same time as the mascots. He also assisted the club on the commercial side for a couple of years.

He sat on Campbell Money’s testimonial committee and was also in the group that put on shows in the town hall to raise cash for St Mirren and bought the club their first computers way back in late 80s .

The SMISA Special Recognition Award has only been out on four occasions previously - to groundsman Tommy Docherty, former head of youth David Longwell, ex-player Hugh Murray and former announcer Phil Clark. 

Roddy should have in fact won this a long time ago and for that we humbly apologise. He is pictured at half-time during the recent Falkirk game alongside SMISA’s Jim Cumming, who presented the award.