It’s now six weeks since the Crawley Town Supporters Alliance came into being, and the Supporters Club and Devils Trust said farewell. It’s been a hectic six weeks. When representatives from the two committees first met formally with a view to forming an Alliance back in May- if ratified by our memberships- we couldn’t have imagined the amount of work that we’d have to put in to make the dream a reality and deliver on Bruce’s vision. But here we are, running four coaches to Port Vale, reaching a membership milestone, in the process of finalising our first community initiatives and announcing an Extraordinary General Meeting at which we can formally elect a board to take the organisation forward. Did we mention the reintroduction of Golden Gamble, with all profits going into football related projects designed to benefit the community and the club? No, thought not!

The interim Board would like to thank all of our members for their support and for their offers of help, many of which will be taken up shortly. We’d also like to ensure that you all have a full understanding of the road we’ve taken to get to this point, so if you look at the first attachment it’ll spell out where we are, how we got here and where we’re going. And finally, as well as inviting all members to our EGM- which will be held in Redz at 7.30 PM on Wednesday 5th October- we’d like to ask if any of you would like to share the load and stand for election to the formal board; this election is the main reason for the EGM, though we also want to share with you the details of our work so far, as we’re doing it on your behalf.

The Crawley Town Supporters Alliance is a Supporters Trust. We chose the Trust model as it has a legal and financial status which provides benefits to the community and safeguards our independence. Our constitution is governed by the rules laid down by Supporters Direct, and we’re working on it at present to ensure it encompasses the aims of both former organisations- but in reality we both wanted much the same, so although it will take a little time to finalise it shouldn’t be too difficult!

The constitution states that our Board should be made up of up to twelve members. Currently our Interim Board has nine- two of our former Co-Chairs, Ron Parsons and Steve Leake, left to work for the football club. So please don’t apply for the board if you’re planning to become an employee of CTFC, we don’t want to lose another one! Seriously, however, this is YOUR Alliance. The nine members of our current committee will stand for election, but if any of you would like to take on our roles, put yourselves forward and give us a rest!

The process will work as follows:

• Between now and Tuesday 6th September 2011, any member who would like to join the Alliance Board should put themselves forward by contacting the Interim Chair, Ian Townsend, on chairman@ctfcsa.co.uk or by calling him on 07860478050. The cut off date for nominations has been agreed as Tuesday 6th September in order that we can produce and send out proxy voting forms if required at the same time as we send out formal invitations to the EGM- these have to be despatched 28 days prior to the meeting in accordance with the constitution. All nominees will be required to provide a personal statement of 100 words or less explaining the skills and commitment which they will bring to the organisation- this will provide information which will help to guide our membership when casting their vote.They will also be required to understand and comply with the Rules, Responsibilities and Commitments of the Alliance, as attached below.

Please be aware that you are not voting for people to take specific positions; you vote for the board, and the elected board members then vote in the officers. In addition, we also require a secretary. This is a pivotal role but deals mainly with administration and organisation, and does not have the other board responsibilities. Please let us know if you’d be interested in this position.

• If we have twelve or fewer nominations by the 6th September 2011, there will not be an election- those nominated will be formally confirmed in post at the EGM. If however there are more than 12 nominations, then a formal election will be held at the EGM and proxy voting forms will be despatched to all members along with their invitations. The cut off date for returning these proxy voting forms will be 5PM on Wednesday 5th October 2011.

We hope this all makes sense- let us know if you have any questions or would like clarification on any of the issues. We’ll be posting more information about our work so far on the website shortly, including all of the minutes from all of the meetings we’ve had to date- and as we’ve been meeting on a weekly basis there will be much to read. We feel that it is important that you understand and have visibility of all of our decision making- particularly so that you can make suggestions about ways we can do things better.

We hope that you are all happy with our work, our aims and the way we go about communicating with you- but we appreciate that we can’t please all of the people all of the time. If any member (or even those who are currently not members) have any suggestions about how we could do things better, we’d love it if they would let us know- and perhaps get involved to instigate improvement. Lastly, if any members feel that after six weeks of operation they they are not getting what they signed up for, and that they no longer wish to be part of the organisation, they should also let us know, and we will gladly refund their membership. But we’d be sad if anyone felt that way.

Again, thanks for the faith you’ve shown in the Alliance thus far. Together we will support our club and our community for the benefit of all.

Crawley Town Supporters Alliance -Approved route for formation

CTSA Board Members Rules, Responsibilities and Commitments