Thank you to everyone who was able to join us online or in person at the SGM on Wednesday 1st November 2023.
A recording of the meeting is available on the Dons Trust members’ ProBoards site at https://donstrust.boards.net/.
The results of the votes on the resolutions are here.
The board has reflected on the SGM and listened to the feedback from our members. We have also met with the Football Supporters Association (FSA). We discussed the meeting and the feedback at our board meeting on 8th November and we noted that the turnout for voting is the highest it has ever been.
As the board is a collective, we have taken the decision to respond in that vein, rather than responding individually.
We had decided ahead of the meeting that the chair would run the meeting in order to try to get through the large number of resolutions as quickly as possible so that we could prioritise members speaking during the meeting.
We have noted feedback that the rest of the board did not speak, and we have discussed ways in which we might address this in the future, based on past practice by The Dons Trust itself, and advice from The FSA. For the purposes of accountability, we take the view that the board should be on the stage rather than, for example, sat among the membership. In future, we will ensure each board member speaks to introduce themselves, respond to or introduce a resolution.
Although we felt overall that the meeting went well, what disappointed us most was that there was not much time left after the resolutions for discussion and questions from members. We recognise these are key meetings where we all get together and they should be an opportunity for thought-provoking discussion among members.
We discussed what we might do to make the process quicker, which might mean for example taking the resolutions as read and starting right away with questions to the proposers. We are open to further discussion of how this might be achieved and invite people to let us have their suggestions. Please email michele.little@thedonstrust.org with your input.
We have decided that, in line with best practice and as part of our responsibility as a board to provide leadership in this area, we will continue to make recommendations about resolutions. However, in future we believe it would be a better approach to focus our attention on more key issues, meaning that we will not always make a recommendation.