We would like to thank everyone who completed our recent survey, and also for taking into account the difficult effects of the pandemic on the club when deciding their answers.

We had a total of 742 replies. The data has been analysed and all individual comments have been shared internally so we can prioritise the areas you’ve told us we can try and improve in.

On matchdays we have already met with the new DRFC committee and have agreed to work together to improve the food and drink offering at Blackwell Meadows next season.

The two clubs announced last week that they will be working more closely together:

https://darlingtonfc.co.uk/news/darlington-rugby-club-and-darlington-fc-pledge-to-work-closely-together

Further meetings are planned ahead of our pre-season games which we hope will lead to improvements, we will keep you updated as things progress. We also plan to work on making our matches about more than just the 90 minutes next season.

The data on our media output showed high satisfaction levels across all areas -- that's very much appreciated by everyone involved with the media output. When looking at the data by age, one area our survey highlighted for us to focus on is “interviews with players, management and the Board” which a greater number than average of our supporters in lower age groups believes can be improved.

We are also aware from the survey that we need to concentrate on attracting more fans from the younger age groups to attend home matches.

We are all committed to trying to continually improve what we do, using the limited resources that we have. We’ll use all of the feedback to help us do this.

We’re embarking on a full review of digital strategy to move the club forwards off the pitch and generate vital additional revenue whilst enhancing the digital fan experience.

We’re working on a new structure to support the delivery of the strategy with new functions being created or formalised and clearly defined roles being created.

This approach will allow the Club to move from its prior operating principles of a few key volunteers trying to cover many bases, often with overlap or underlap to a more structured and efficient way of working with clear roles and objectives set up to deliver the strategy’s objectives.

We’re working on four new functions:

• Technology – Maintain and develop the growing number of DFC platforms and technologies to allow us to engage with our fans better than ever before.
• Data & Analytics – Design, build and maintain a core data warehouse of fan data, leveraging the data to support the execution of the marketing strategy.
• Content – Building on the excellent work done to date by the media team, continue to develop new and exciting content for fans to consume.
• Marketing & Comms – Responsible for the creation and execution of engaging marketing campaigns to the fanbase.

We’re therefore looking for skilled people in these four areas who have spare time to give to a fan-owned football club run on a non-profit basis for the benefit of the wider community. It’s an exciting time to get on board with a real chance to shape the future direction of the Club’s digital strategy which will only become more important in years to come.

If you think you have the skills and time to make a difference in one of these areas, we’d love to hear from you, or indeed if you'd like to volunteer for any role at Darlington FC, why not complete our volunteer form here:

https://darlingtonfc.co.uk/about/volunteer-help-at-dfc