The “Building a Sustainable Future” presentation

Many thanks to the fans who came out on what was a very cold Monday night to hear DFC Chief Executive Officer David Johnston lay out the way forward for our club, it was great to see so many of you there. To follow up and for the fans who couldn’t be in attendance, there will be a netcafe on Thursday night on the official website to answer any questions.  There were some great questions from the floor after the presentation and we’ve taken on board the feedback from the 500 Club members in particular.

As laid out, the club currently has around £65k of legacy debt. Managing this takes up a great deal of the directors’ time and energy. In order to place the football club on a more secure footing, and to focus on future growth, we aim to eliminate this by the end of February and have been working on various ways to achieve this.

We will shortly be launching an affiliate marketing drive that if the fans get behind, has the potential to generate significant revenue for the club.  Keep your eyes on the official DFC website for more information.

We also recognise that we aren’t maximising our commercial revenues currently and have put in place an action plan especially around selling advertising boards. There are currently over 40 spaces left to fill at Blackwell Meadows and we hope to make inroads into that number over the coming weeks. We will be offering discounted packages for the remainder of this season so please contact Joanne Cameron at joanne.cameron@darlingtonfc.org should you wish to take this offer up. This will generate valuable additional revenue in the short and longer term. We are also in talks with our headline sponsor about extending their shirt sponsorship into next season.

Following feedback from the presentation on Monday night, we plan to contact all 500 Club members individually in the near future to find out their own personal preference going forward. Please note we will never ask any 500 Club member to give up what you have already paid for, that is simply not an option to us. However we are grateful for the suggestions from fans and for those who want to extend further support to the club, we will be coming to you with a range of options for consideration.

Looking beyond this season we are currently planning the budget available to the manager for next season and any financial requirements to invest for growth. At this stage, without any Boost the Budget income, it’s likely the base budget we make available to the manager will be competitive for this division but not at the level seen in the recent past. Ideally if the fans back manager Tommy Wright to a similar level as this season through Boost the Budget, it will enable DFC to assemble a squad with playoff aspirations.

In addition, we would like to create an infra-structure fund to help fund future income-generating assets as mentioned by David on Monday. Blackwell Meadows will very shortly fulfil match ground grading requirements for promotion to the National League and as we are currently unclear as to the Council’s position regarding the Sporting Village and hence its commitment to support our growth at Blackwell, we will not be investing further capital into Blackwell Meadows until this position is understood. We would however like to commence the infra-structure fund via a direct debit scheme (or one-off donations) so can we start to develop funds to immediately prime the pump in order to fund income-generating assets such as the clubhouse and the 4G pitch proposals when our future location is confirmed. The funds would be held in a ringfenced account by DFCSG until such a position is reached.

We will update the fans in the New Year regarding both the Boost the Budget scheme and the Infra-structure scheme as we would like to commence these as soon as possible.

Our netcafe takes place on Thursday evening, beginning at 7.30. Questions can be sent to media@darlingtonfc.org.