Trust Board Election. Questions for Mark Cordell

Communications, Shareholding, Club Business plan, Governance, Trust membership, The Freehold(s).
All have been mentioned in these Q & As and have also been mentioned for many previous years as 'work to do'.
What do you feel is needed to put some 'adrenalin' into the process?

fred binneys head said:

In my view a big part of the role of the Trust is to hold the senior employees at the club to account for their performance - can you give me some recent examples from your working life where you have held people in senior management positions to account for their performance please?

Thanks,

FBH.

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Hi FBH,

In short the answer is yes, although I don't feel that any public forum is an appropriate place to discuss the details, I would be happy to pick this up offline with you if you wanted more detail.

What I am happy to discuss on here would be my experience in recruitment, I thrived in this environment through being consultative rather than the forceful sales techniques the industry is better known for. I mention this as I believe that even if someone is perhaps under-performing the best approach is to find out why and assist before jumping to conclusions and making rash decisions. This will ensure longer term success and better working relations rather than fractured links.

Of course if this does not work then further steps would be required, of which I have gained experience of through previous management roles.

I hope this answers your question albeit vaguely.

Any ideas how the Trust membership can be increased to provide the funds necessary to sustain a third or hopefully in due course second tier Club?

Spoonz Red E said:

Communications, Shareholding, Club Business plan, Governance, Trust membership, The Freehold(s).
All have been mentioned in these Q & As and have also been mentioned for many previous years as 'work to do'.
What do you feel is needed to put some 'adrenalin' into the process?

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Hi Spoonz,

I am going to do my best to answer this but not being on the trust board I am not fully aware of the stumbling blocks that may have been encountered in some areas. I think that sometimes new ideas are all that are needed to add Adrenalin. A fresh look and a different way of approaching challenges can often open doors and I am committed to giving time both in and out of meetings to research ideas and ways in which to help the club and trust.

Communications is clearly a big one, and with a deemed improvement in this perhaps any doubts you have surrounding the other areas may well be answered. From my experience of running for a place on the board last year I picked up the clear message that the trust does communicate via email and other methods. I guess this highlights the issue that you can lead a horse to water but can't make it drink. From this I think it is important to liaise with trust members and find out how they would best receive information. Ideas on this could be providing reports for forums such as this or even monthly reports in the newspaper. However to confirm this initial interaction with the trust members is needed. With this said lots has been done to improve this area within the trust so if successful I would look to build on progress rather than tear up the rule book and start again.

I understand that shareholding has been an ongoing issue along with the freeholds as people need to have a desire to sell, the trust would then need to be in a position to buy. As highlighted in a prior post I definitely agree with growing the shareholding of the trust and would like to see one asset added to the portfolio to give more financial stability.

In my opinion the club, like any business, has to have a business plan. I do appreciate this may not be annual due to the way in which a football club works but I would be on board in setting expectations and applying pressure in this field. I guess this can link with governance as I believe basic business functions like this should be a given and not chased. As for the running of the club I believe like any business the people at the head in the club manage their own ship and then be accountable in any shortcomings.

Trust membership is always a hot topic and as previously mentioned I believe people are more likely to join if they can see a clear purpose for why, with this in mind I would like to apply business cases to why we would seek new members. For example a push on membership to allow the trust to acquire a property. I also believe in working closely with the community in outlying villages, this may not bring about mass membership but we live in a rural area and sometimes it will need to be in small steps.

I hope you feels that this answers the question.

Apologies for butting in on this but the Club have the right to buy the old school building from OTR (Exeter) Ltd. at a fair valuation; the Trust could of course provide some or all of the funds if they were not available from Club sources. One difficulty is determining what that valuation might be.

John William said:

Apologies for butting in on this but the Club have the right to buy the old school building from OTR (Exeter) Ltd. at a fair valuation; the Trust could of course provide some or all of the funds if they were not available from Club sources. One difficulty is determining what that valuation might be.

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Could the Trust make the purchase instead ?

Alistair20000 said:

Could the Trust make the purchase instead ?

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As I understand it, only through mirror contracts, the actual option to purchase being to ECFC Ltd. But the Trust could presumably more readily raise money through crowdfunding or similar than the Club.

John William said:

As I understand it, only through mirror contracts, the actual option to purchase being to ECFC Ltd. But the Trust could presumably more readily raise money through crowdfunding or similar than the Club.

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Or the Club could assign the benefit of the option to the Trust ? Assuming it is assignable in the option agreement.

John William said:

Apologies for butting in on this but the Club have the right to buy the old school building from OTR (Exeter) Ltd. at a fair valuation; the Trust could of course provide some or all of the funds if they were not available from Club sources. One difficulty is determining what that valuation might be.

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Hi John, no worries at all with you 'butting' in. Thanks for clearing it up.

Sexton Blake said:

Any ideas how the Trust membership can be increased to provide the funds necessary to sustain a third or hopefully in due course second tier Club?

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I have some ideas, as we alluded to earlier I think there is more buy in if there is a common goal that people can buy into rather than survival, a particular project or purpose for example.

We also need to look at the reason people join, i.e cup runs. Maybe we can look at a specific campaign at the start of the season to get members to increase the chances of getting a ticket should we make the later stages.

Other than that I think the trust has to be visible outside of Exeter, it does a lot of good work but do people know about it if they don't find themselves at the ground. Potential croadshows selling the benefit in outlying villages could be the answer to this. It Could also be linked in with the club or even schools that partner some of the shootouts etc.

Offering the chance to buy a years membership as a gift and making it more of a presentation package other than just a card.

My final thought which is not thoroughly related is to look at the possibility of trademarking 'we own our club'. It would allow us to really play on it would take on more meaning.

Sorry for the ramblings on this but I think there is a lot than can be done. I do have some other ideas surrounding the use of data but will hold this back to the hustings rather than go into too much detail now. I am pretty sure this will be one of the things to come up at the hustings.