Business Advantages of Supporter Community ... - Supporters Direct

Exeter City – Valuing Supporter Volunteering
By the end of May 2003, just after Exeter’s relegation from the
Football League, the Supporters’ Trust kept the club afloat and the
then majority shareholder, Ivor Doble, asked the Trust to run the club
on his behalf for 6 months to prove that they could do it.
This involved:
● Finding a manager
● Developing a team
● Getting the ground up to standard
● Fund raising
Volunteers and work parties set about doing up the ground, tidying,
painting and repairing facilities. The amount of voluntary labour that
was being put in was quantified, in order to put a figure on it, based
on the number of hours worked, assuming payment at minimum wage
levels. This was then classed as a loan from the Trust to the club.
‘It was very important to recognise the value of work done by the community,
when getting Ivor Doble to sell his shares, so that the supporters were not done
over, as happened at York City,’ said Frances Farley.
This approach has continued to the present day and the supporters’
trust continues to give the club a monthly lump sum made up of
both cash and the value of the hours donated by volunteers. The
advantage of this unique approach is significant for the long term
protection of supporter community ownership, says Neil Le Milliere:
‘All of that volunteering goes to a credit account, which acts like a loan as
well. So if the club were to go bust again, we’d be the majority shareholder
and we’d have the major credit line, so we will be the ones in control of what
happens to it. It’s basically an insurance policy against something else dodgy
happening and the club being wrested away from us. The idea is that what
will happen eventually is that there will be a transfer of equity, so that there’d
be a share issue of some sort and we would exchange our loan for shares to
increase our shareholding.’
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