Hoops Fund - A personal diary

Saturday 21st September 2002. Ask any Rangers fan the significance of this particular date and undoubtedly they will all respond with "that famous 3-1 win at Bristol City". There is however, another significance regarding this date to those of us involved with the committee of QPR 1st, because it was at that particular game, whilst cheering on our team during that wonderful afternoon at Ashton gate, that two members of the comm., Will Wall and Dave Anderson who were sitting next to each other, discussed the possibility of the setting up of a fund raising venture for the benefit of the club.

During the following weeks we began to talk about what Dave and Will had discussed in more detail between the rest of us. It was in fact a subject that we had all briefly discussed between ourselves in recent times, but due to our concerns regarding the club finances, we decided that now was the time for us to look into all the different and various options regarding a fundraising venture. It was to prove to be a roller coaster affair of such proportions that if we'd known what we were about to embark upon, I'm not all that sure we would have pressed ahead with the venture!

At this particular time in October, we were immersed with the Sharebank scheme, in fact we were just about to launch it in time for the forthcoming Loftus Road Plc egm, and so we decided to wait until our November committee meeting in which to talk about a fundraising venture properly.
The following paragraphs are taken from the minutes of that meeting relating to this matter.

7. Emergency Fund

DA had prepared a mini agenda on this subject, which I have copied for the benefit of those who could not attend, and for the sake of clarity, at the end of these minutes. Basically the discussions went around in circles. What would be the best type of scheme? Would fans money for the use of paying off the loan be the right thing to do? Would any funds be better off being used as a loan to the club for shortfalls etc? It was decided that a meeting just to discuss this entire matter is of urgent need asap. But everyone's input would be required before any decision is made.

It was also decided that in the meantime if everyone could please put their thoughts down as to the type of scheme they would like to see and for what purposes etc, this would help the flow of the fund meeting. It was also agreed to survey our members on their thoughts.

Mini Agenda

" Scheme Title
" Club Backing
" Supporters Direct (advice and support)
" Publicity
" Mail-out
" Donation Document and payment methods
" QPR 1st Membership implications
" Bank Account
" Deal with club - loan or donation
" Documentation re deal with club
" Ongoing information to donors
" Conflict of interests with Share-bank Scheme - is there one?

Well, during the following weeks lots of discussions took place between ourselves whilst I had a look on some of the other Supporters Trusts' websites to see which kind of ventures they had embarked upon. Whilst the most basic element was of Trusts wanting to help their clubs who were struggling financially, most of their schemes included either a loan note capital enterprise or monies to their clubs to enable them to spend the funds on whatever their needs entailed, in exchange for shares and/or directorship representation to ensure supporter influence at their clubs.

Juzza also enquired on the Supporters Direct email list as regards fundraising ventures and if any trusts would be kind enough to furnish us with details of anything they felt would be of use to us because the intention was for him to draft a white paper looking at the various options open to us in order for us to fully discuss in the near future.

We also did an email poll to our members (and a separate one via our website for non members) to ask for opinions regarding basic fundraising ideas. The response was positive in the main, with the indications being that bucket collections favoured heavily as regards donation collections, whilst there were mixed opinions on signing up to standing order/direct debit mandates.

In the meantime, a meeting between ourselves and Harold and Matt Winton had been arranged in order for us to discuss our fundraising venture and to see if there was a way in which we could work together, perhaps jointly.

This meeting took place during December. It was amicable and both parties were open to all suggestions discussed that evening.
It was agreed that for the venture to succeed, particularly by way of getting the message across to as many people as far and wide across the QPR spectrum as to why a scheme of such grand proportions was required, and indeed to do it justice, the structure of it would be a requirement for an all encompassing cross-fan involvement.

We came away with much food for thought from that meeting, though with the Trust being the driving force behind the setting up of the Fund, we were quite sure that our own position would be set in stone from the offset.

It was during December time that we also had a meeting with David Davies to discuss some issues - mainly the financial aspect of the club at that time - and the idea of the fundraising venture was briefly brought up during the course of that meeting. DD was flying out to the States to meet Tim Krause of the Milwaukee Wave the following day, and it was that evening when we presented him with the financial article that David Price had been working on for a number of weeks. In fact, we suggested that he read it whilst travelling on his flight across the big pond!

It was this article that had merely led to the cementing of our concerns regarding the financial status of the club, which had led to us taking things as far as we had regarding the fundraising proposal. David's article highlighted our growing concerns and it was shortly after presenting this piece to David Davies that we published the article in full on our website, and an extract of it in the fanzine a kick up the r's.

At the turn of the New Year, due to not having received an awful lot of feedback regarding other Trust fundraising ventures, the idea of the white paper was scrapped, and we decided to form a sub group to take this scheme forward. Five of us put ourselves forward and this sub group comprised of: Dave Anderson (for his finance expertise); Will (as he was very keen to get the idea off the ground into something more concrete), Leon (because he was willing to undertake the administrative duties that such a venture would entail), Juzza (for his experience in marketing); and myself (extra input and keeping everyone else on the committee informed via letters and minutes from meetings as regards any progress and to ask for committee approval on such things).

We had our first sub group meeting during the early weeks of February at a very nice venue in Watford. (Watford because it suited the majority of us geographically, either from home or work). At that first meeting we thrashed out the content - the basis of which would be the setting up of the Fund to enable fans to contribute towards a much-needed financial injection for QPR in return for a stake in the club - which would need to be included within our draft document as an introduction to the scheme and to extend invites to as many parties as possible, to join us with the venture. The proposed content included the following:

- Background

- Need

- Scheme

- Delivery plan

I had a deadline for the skeleton proposal to be ready by the following Wednesday, with Dave to look at it and polish it up for the weekend after. Amazingly, we stuck to those deadlines and the following week we had another meeting with Harold and Matthew Winton to show them our draft proposal and to discuss any points within it.

The main theme of the proposal was background to the club finances; the need for such a fundraising scheme; the scheme itself (donations to help the club in its hour of need in exchange for shares to be held in Trust); and how the plan would be delivered and launched (the management board, messages of support from various QPR parties, past and present, and of course the PR aspect of the venture). It was at this point that the subject of incorporating the matter of supporter representation be included within the proposal, and so a main committee meeting was called for in early March to discuss further the structure of the Fund.

In the meantime, I worked on a brief summary of the Fund with the intention of it to be sent to ex players in order to ask them for their support and endorsement of the scheme.

The committee meet for March proved to be an exhausting, yet brainstorming session. Our caseworker at Supporters Direct, Matt Holt, was invited to come along, which he kindly accepted, but I got the feeling he regretted it because 3 hours later way past 10pm we were still batting ideas and suggestions amongst one another!

The main points to come from this meeting were: amendments to the draft; DA to contact Rodney Marsh's pa as regards some support; myself to write and send letters to the LSA explaining about the concept of the fund and the proposed management board for the Fund and inviting one of their committee to be a rep on said board; making use of the last two home games of the season to maximise potential; no monies to be handed to the club until we (and the management board of the Hoops Fund) would be satisfied in ourselves that such monies would go to good use!; LR Plc board meeting coming up very soon so need to present the draft doc of the proposal to the board for that time; a second sub group meeting at Watford was arranged for the following Monday evening to take place.

The main debate from that meeting though involved the subject of fan representation at board level being incorporated into the scheme. A vote was taken on this issue as to should the board go for this, whether or not we would accept their rumoured offer. It was also agreed to put the entire issue to the membership to ask for the members' ratification regarding this matter.

Meanwhile, we then heard that the LR Plc board meeting had been brought forward to the very next Wednesday so it was important we had the agreed and amended draft ready for then.

Amongst the discussions at our second Hoops Fund sub group meeting, which took place on 10th March were: the required amendments for the draft document; the PR structure for the venture; commercial activities that we felt would be open to us, including approaching Vauxhall Motors to ask if they would consider donating a car to the cause; and club co-operation. Those minutes ended with this sentence "The meeting finished just after 8pm and the group left excited yet apprehensive as regards the outcome of the board's decision come Wednesday. It was also noted that if the club turned us down, or feel there are too many conditions, then we would go it alone". I have copied below the action points taken from that meeting to give an idea as to the kind of madness which kind of overtook us at that particular time!

Actions Points

Dave Anderson

- To speak with DD to discuss the draft once the board had met.
- To speak with our corporate lawyer regarding his thoughts on a set of rules/constitution for the management board and to discuss the matter of indemnity.
- To speak with Rodney Marsh's pa to chase about player backing.

Leon Stent

- To finalise the standing order form.
- To arrange the closed buckets.

Justin Pieris

- To do the printing of the draft document and to present it to DD

Ant Hobbs

- To have a look on his contact list to find some pr professionals and to ask for their help in the presentation of the pr for the launch, both prior and at the time of the launch.

Will Wall

- To help with contacting players for support

Tracy Stent

- Type up the final amendments to the document and send it to the comm list for Juzza to print out.
- To contact our lawyer to put him in touch with DA.
- To contact Clive Soley's pa with the summary of the document
- To send out letters and summaries to the LSA
- To set about getting the ball rolling as regarding player support

3 days later, Dave, Juzza, Will and myself attended a meeting with David Davies and Nick Blackburn to discuss the venture. We wanted to ensure full club co-operation, and though they asked for a couple of small changes (we went through the document paragraph by paragraph because, in their eyes, they felt it unnecessary the way we portrayed the board so negatively) their requests seemed to be a small price to pay in order to ensure that with their co-operation, we got the message across as far and wide as possible to as many fans as we could as to how serious the situation was regarding the club's financial concerns.

There then ensued lots of debate between the committee during the next week or so regarding a number of issues relating to the Fund. Some of the debate began to cause great distress, frustration and upset to some of us and it was agreed that another sub group meeting was required to talk about the draft document, and indeed, the entire structure of the venture.

From that meeting, on 24th March, it was recommended that the directorship issue (fan representation) to be unlinked from the scheme for the time being because it was causing unnecessary grief to all concerned, though it was suggested that once the fund got underway, for the resuming of this issue to be looked into. The suggestion was also made that once monies have been raised, that we put it to the board that they might like to offer the position of an elected supporter as a gesture of goodwill for all the supporters efforts and help etc.

A big discussion took place regarding the management board committee i.e. the advantages and disadvantages of such an overseeing body. It was also mentioned during the course of these discussions that the devising of rules for a management committee (especially in time for the launch, of which we were looking towards the Notts County game) would be a nightmare, geographically, legally and financially.

It was recommended to put this idea onto the back burner, and once the Fund is up and running, to resume the idea in order to ensure cross-fan backing from as many fans and groups as possible, and very importantly, to give the Fund an over seeing body.

The draft document (about the 20th version!) would need to be trimmed in order to keep it short and simple to ensure as many people as possible understood the club finances and the fundraising venture. It was felt that with our initial plans being so grand, it was time to go back to basics because otherwise we faced the serious possibility of missing the boat as regards launching the Fund before the end of the season.

If committee approval was given for the above proposals (which they were subsequently were) it was agreed for me to meet up with Dave later on in the week to go over the document for a trimming down and re-write and for us to then ask a professional writer to have a look at it for us for the final version.

This was done and the race was then on to locate a professional writer within our database who would have the time to undertake such a task for us. With the committee vote being taken, and passed, regarding the unlinking of the directorship issue to the fund, there was no need for us to work on a poll to send to our members asking for their ratification on this matter.

As the time passed into April, the whirl of activity showed no sign of abating. Juzza offered to step down from the sub group because he felt he had gone as far as he could on this venture and felt it was time for him to concentrate more on the management and policy re-structure for the committee that we had been mooting amongst ourselves for a long time. However, we wouldn't let him as we felt that his marketing and business sense offered the group a sense of balance.

Ant (our press officer) made contact with some PR professionals on our database, and one of them, Jim Anderson, currently living on one of the Channel Islands, offered to help us with ideas, leaflet content and some writing stuff. Another chap kindly offered us help with a glossy advert/video promotion, and whilst time unfortunately was proving to be against us regarding the second offer, (though it is something for us to look to in the near future), Jim's help proved to be extremely valuable with him kindly taking on the role of giving our final literature/document for the launch a professional re-write.

In the meantime, Leon set about changing the name of our co-operative business account in the name of QPR 1st to The Hoops Fund. He also spoke and liaised with the co-op bank many times in the next couple of weeks regarding the standing order form requirements.

I wrote to Vauxhall Motors with my mission to find us a car to be donated to the cause, (how they knocked us out of the FA cup, the irony of them donating a car to our cause and all the publicity this would generate etc) but unfortunately they replied by stating that they tend to concentrate on their own charities and suggested for us to contact our own local dealers.
A QPR fan, and member of the Trust, who works for another car firm, is currently taking on this mission.

By mid-April Jim had worked on the final version about the scheme for us, which was to be a four-page publication in the middle of the Crewe programme, along with a standing order form (this was to coincide with bucket collections taking place around the ground that day). He also wrote a 400 word article to go into the Notts County programme, giving info about the soon to be launched venture at the next home game.

Will was busy contacting the club arranging with them such things such as programme space for the articles and deadlines.
A week before the Crewe game, Ant drafted a press release relating to the club finances, which was sent across the wires, and a couple of days before the Crewe game he wrote, and sent, another release relating to the Hoops Fund as a follow-up.

Our 4th sub group meeting took place on the 14th April and in that meeting we went through a checklist regarding all the various aspects we needed to ensure were being dealt with. Things like the setting up for website donations; buckets - these had been purchased a few weeks before and were of the secure closed type, all labelled up, along with collection id badges for collectors; any further endorsements/support for the cause; and a thousand other things that we were panicking over!

An email request for help regarding bucket collecting for the Crewe game was sent to members, various fans and was also put on our website. Collection points for the buckets (collecting them before the game and leaving them during) were arranged as were passes for those who felt they might be needed.

The printing for the pull outs (7000 + 1000 extra to give out whilst bucket collecting) was arranged, as was the publication for it with the programme printers.

And then before we knew it the day of the Crewe game had approached. I don't mind admitting that some of us were rather wary as to what kind of reception would be received but we needn't have worried because most comments/feedback received was positive. The only downside to the day was that due to the nature of the game (last official home game of the season) we found ourselves a little short on collectors, but in the hour and a half that we collected for, a total of £1019.57 was raised.

I also took a bucket along with me to the club agm a week or so later, and with some of the board directors putting into the bucket themselves, just under £100 was raised that afternoon.
Looking at the most recent Hoops Fund account update, along with the monies raised above, and incorporated with standing orders that fans have so kindly signed up to, the most recent total is £1,680.

There is much to be done regarding the Hoops Fund, including the raising of its profile; encouraging businesses to become involved; liasing with the club regarding which games we shall be collecting at next season; and the need for commercial activities including badges, stickers and prize draws (the lottery licence needed for this has been applied for) in order to raise much needed funds. Because cash injections and fresh investment is most certainly required by our club.
But we feel we are at long last getting there. And currently we're sorting out the printing for the leaflets (which Jim worked on) that will go out with the season ticket mail out.

I have written this article to give everyone an idea as to the kind of adventures we have embarked upon since that fateful day (for us on the Hoops Fund sub group personally anyway!) in September of last year when we first began to get the ball rolling on this venture. There have been tears, tantrums but some laughs as well.

One of the main things that caused us great concern during this period were the concerns expressed by some fans as regards the agenda of the scheme. And we did (in fact we still do obviously) take these concerns very seriously. There were worries expressed that we were undertaking this venture in order to just help out the current board at the club, and that it could indeed be seen by some, as us cosying up to them. Nothing was, and could be, further from the truth.

I recall, when I stood outside along South Africa Road, rattling my bucket, I felt an incredible sadness that things had come to this stage, and when I thought of some of those concerns, (and however hurtful they were felt, they were most certainly valid points) how I wished I could have explained our situation at that particular time. So I shall take the opportunity to do so now from a personal perspective (though I know all of my colleagues feel the same way).

When I went out rattling my bucket, or when I take part in other ventures as regards raising money to go towards the fund etc, I was/am *not* doing it to bail out the board/Plc etc. I am doing it because I owe it to Queens Park Rangers football club, a football club that for many of us is an integral part of us. I am doing it because those fans who put their trust in us when they voted for us at our last committee elections expect us to do the right thing for Queens Park Rangers.

Certainly not for possible self-interested boards. Nor for faceless run Plc's. But for the good of QPR. I am doing it for the benefit of people, who for one reason or another at the moment cannot watch the Rs, but deserve for there to be a QPR being looked after and nurtured during their absence. I am doing it for the benefit of the QPR exiles abroad, who whilst thousands of miles away, rely on the movers and shakers to ensure that they can still watch what is going on at their beloved QPR from afar. I am doing it for some of the young kids who have travelled on the QPR coaches who for years I have watched growing up, many of them now developing into young men and only now just beginning to get a sniff of the excitement that some of us older supporters often took for granted. I am doing it for the much older generation of fans, some of whom have witnessed so many coming and goings over the years that I am envious of their memories, and who before their time is up secretly hope that they will once again be privileged to see the good times return to our club. I could go on and on but you get my drift.

How can any of the above take place if we just sit back and allow our QPR to go to rack and ruin? Whatever any of our personal feelings towards those in charge at the club, we must remember they will not always be here. Think how many others have been here in the past. And many others will come along in their places in the future. But *we* are the constant hearts at our club and if it means us having to negotiate with the current board in order for us fans to work towards our vision of an existing and thriving QPR, then so be it. We have already decided upon that *no* monies will be handed over anyway unless we can get some real and proper assurances that the money will be put to good use.

I am over the moon that QPR 1st has at last decided to put its energies into this scheme and has got the ball rolling over this venture. And I am chuffed to pieces that the club will now have a fund set up permanently where if it is ever needed in the future it can be called upon.

Being on the sub group has revitalised me in a way I can never explain. And I am so proud of everyone involved. I would like to thank everyone who has been involved with this concept since it's very first inception, right up to the present day, including all of my colleagues, all donators and everyone else who has played a part in getting the Hoop Fund this far. I hope that all of us can now take it forward and I look forward to more fans and groups becoming involved with it as it progresses.

If you would like to help in any way whatsoever, if you have any ideas on how we can raise extra and further revenue, or would like further info, please get in touch on either our email address - hoopsfund@qpr1st.co.uk or write to us at our po box address which is - Hoops Fund, c/o QPR 1st, PO Box 30880, London, W12 OXA.
Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.
Also, if you wish to donate to The Hoops Fund, then you can also contact us by either of the above addresses or to donate online click here.

Tracy