Who’d want to be on the Dons Trust Board? Thankfully there are plenty of candidates in the forthcoming elections, but whoever gets your vote will inherit a to do list most of us would baulk at. Throw in a dysfunctional club governance structure, and the challenges faced are huge. Recently the focus has been on the Board’s attempt to get a mandate to implement restricted actions and reduce its equity holding. Hardly trivial matters, yet they’ve come in for a fair degree of flack in the run up to the votes.
A major criticism was not providing a vision of what the future looks like, and what it would mean for the club before the vote opened. There was a slick strategy document, but it left as many answers and questions. Talking to individual board members it becomes clear, to me at least, that the debt is the issue. We’ve indebted ourselves up to the eyeballs to call Plough Lane our home. Now we’ve got to repay it, and it becomes much harder to do so as a non-league team. Maintaining our league position must be a priority, but doing so with the debt on our backs makes that more difficult.
The club’s financial position is interesting. The recent 2024 PLC accounts show a loss of £0.7m, although that was caused by the auditors asking for a massive depreciation cost on the stadium facilities. We raised £3.3m from player sales, and there are other profitable areas. If only we could get rid of the £8.5m debt. Imagine what we could do with that money.
The first SGM in late September failed to adequately communicate the seriousness of the club’s predicament. Part of this was due to a previous motion that called on the Board not to make a recommendation on how members should vote on motions. That’s a bizarre policy. If you can’t have those in closer to the issue advising you, why the hell are they there. You may not agree with their stance, but you’ve the opportunity to hold them to account.
There was also confusion about the two motions and how they are connected. The restricted actions vote was to put protection in place to protect the club’s assets, namely the ground, name, and FA status. This seems like a no-brainer, until you realise that if we ever had to reduce our equity to less than 50%, they’d be meaningless. They’re really only a short term solution. It is widely expected, including by members of the Dons Trust Board, that the day will come where we can no longer fund the fan ownership model.
As for the equity reduction, if the motion passed it would give the Board a mandate to look for a benefactor willing to give us a sizeable amount without with little say on how the club is run. However, to my knowledge there was no benefactor lined up. Plus if we do end up having to go below 50% equity in the future, it doesn’t make us less of a viable option.
I didn’t vote on either issue, something I regret doing. If I had, I’d have voted in favour of the restricted actions and abstained on the equity reduction. I’m not against a reduction in equity, so why did I not vote in favour? Put simply, I was unclear what the club’s strategy was. It is only in recent conversations with board members that I’ve started to understand the challenges faced.
I feel for the Dons Trust Board. We must acknowledge they’re volunteers spending their spare time wrestling with big issues that affect the club’s future. Could they have communicated things better? Yes. I’m surprised so many Dons Trust members voted on the motions. Much has been made of the vote’s democratic success. 58.56% of members voted on the restricted actions motion and 58.45% on the equity reduction motion. Reasonable numbers, although hardly a ringing endorsement on such a pivotal vote. If a clear position had been communicated, I suspect more members would have voted in favour of both motions.
So what now? I fully expect the restricted action vote to pass at the next SGM. I’ll certainly be voting in favour. As for reduced equity, we’ve kicked the can down the road, only to go through this all again at some point in the future. The only saving grace is that when that happens, the membership will be better informed. It’s a shame we weren’t this time.
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