First of all thanks to RFCO for the opportunity to go and for Benny Gale to speak to us and answer our questions. Benny went through many things so I'll probably forget things and think of them later on.
Tonight was designed to give us a first look at the Fighting Tiger Fund but circumstances such as scoring front and back pages in the Herald-Sun meant the club decided to go public 24 hours earlier. The ticketmaster link to donate will only be used today and the club will switch to IMG. The club will be sending out info (what's on the net) to members on Monday.
The timeframe while not fixed is pretty much over 12 months with the main focus on the next 2 months leading up to the March 17 gala function (cost $280) where the club is hopeful that wealthy supporters/benefactors will bring in the big donations. From the questions it was mentioned that in non-for-profit fundraisers about 20% comes from the average folk so the fundraising will need to be all incompassing. The club felt that going to the members first was right because the club has survived and will succeed on the passion and support of the members/supporters (he admitted that support and loyalty came with little in return from the team). Later on in the year there'll be a thank you party for those who donate which will probably generate more money and then it'll tie back into next year's membership campaign where there'll be a box to tick if you want to donate (again). We'll probably have a final thank you gala (generating more money) just before the start of the 2012 season.
As yet they are still deciding how to acknowledge donators. It all depends on the scale of donations at the gala night on March 17. Possibly some acknowledgement will exist in the Social Club.
This idea of passion Benny traced back to NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue who is 20 years turned the NFL from level with NHL, NBA and MLB in America to the biggest thing in town. Tagliabue said the key to the success was passion.
Benny spoke of us spreading the word (across social media) and the motivation behind this and it doesn't matter if supporters donate $25, $50, $75 or $100. He just wants us to unite behind this idea to succeed. We're not asking for help from supporters; we need the help to compete with the successful clubs. We're sick of being mediocre. We want to win that next premiership. When we were spending $140k I think on recruiting, Collingwood was spending $900k. Their success and financial power was built up gradually to where they are now not overnight.
Someone asked about additional revenue avenues? The money raised will enable us to hire more people whose job it is to generate more revenue.
The 500k supporters is based on the Morgan Poll. A couple of people disputed the figure and the club doesn't have a record or contact details of many of these supporters (if we did we would contact them) but Benny said it's something we can go by and spruik to potential sponsors as our potential reach.
Benny also went through some figures if we could wipe out the debt. If we had 55k members, 50k average attendance, 22 million tv audience and the sponsorship that these figures would bring we'd make $5-6 million per annum profit; if it's 50k, 46k avg. attendance, 16 million tv audience then it's $3-4 million; if it 45k members, 40k avg. attendance, and 12 million tv audience then it's $1-2 million. So shows how much of a difference success on-field and off makes.
No word on the final major co-sponsor. Benny just said it shouldn't be too far away.
We want our own VFL side so we can control the development of our players and don't have guys playing in the Coburg seconds. There's also a brand benefit as well.
Benny repeated that we want to be able to spend 100% of the salary to secure our best players now and build up a war-chest to go out and get a Chris Judd type. At the moment we are paying 92.5% of the cap which Benny said so we should given we finished 15th.
Family Day can't be at Punt Rd as it's a construction site. It'll be a Craigieburn next year as well as the ground will be realigned at the end of this season. The cricketers will be kicked off in two months time. The realignment to Docklands size is a bit different to what we discussed here. The width of the ground will go from the edge of new building to the fence along Punt Rd (a 1.5m gain). The realigned oval will also be a fraction longer. The surface will be levelled off with a laser and lifted a touch.
The realignment will also mean the players will have to continue to train at places like Bulleen next preseason as well.
The redevelopment is 6 weeks behind schedule due to all the rain we've had.
RFCO then spoke about social media and the RFC website. He said the leaking of draftees won't happen again (MT ducks his head as RFCO talks about it
). Attracting traffic back to the RFC website including via forums like OER helps with attracting sponsors. People at the fan night congratulated RFCO and media relations boss Simon Matthews for the large improvement in connecting with supporters over the past 3-4 months.
There was more and sorry if it's all about the place or if it's not 100% accurate but I was typing and recalling at the same time. Cheers!
