Of course not everyone will have seen our most recent committee meeting notes. I shamelesslly have copied the following, having been in attendance at the 'informal' November meeting.
Review of previous meeting’s minutes: Most actions had been carried out. The communication survey was to be postponed pending discussion around OxVox (below). The issues of an advisory panel on policing and stewarding and fixture boards had been included on the briefing note for the Club but not covered at the last meeting with them. This should be carried forward to the next discussion with the Club (ACTION: MTD to note this). The FSF section of the website had been drafted by MTD. All agreed this was appropriate and useful. ACTION: MTD to make live on the website.
OxVox/OUFC meeting review: SB and JF gave the Committee an overview of their recent meeting (along with MS) with Darryl Eales, Mark Ashton, and Michael Appleton. This seemed to have clarified a how OxVox could work with the Club’s new management in the future, and following the meeting the Committee noted that we were clearly thinking along the same lines now on a number of issues (the Bury ticket offer to schools and Darryl Eales’ programme notes for that Bury game on working with supporters).
JF led a discussion about this role for OxVox and how we wanted to work with the Club. A number of factors had changed in the last couple of years or would be changing shortly:
• Other supporters’ groups had been formed (with OxVox involvement) that were doing the kinds of things OxVox had done in the past (fundraising, fan initiatives, etc.
![Wink )](./images/smilies/icon_wink.gif)
.
• The Club has new owners and managers and had demonstrated a desire to engage with the community around the Club in some of the ways OxVox has in the past pushed,
• The work of OxVox had for a number of reasons been carried out by a few on the Committee, the workload had caused problems, and was clearly not sustainable,
• A concern that this had led to OxVox becoming anonymous/disengaged,
• Long-standing Committee members would be/potentially would be stepping down at the next AGM, meaning OxVox would be undergoing change, whether it wanted to or not.
JF suggested we need to reconsider the role of the Trust in the light of all this, identify what OxVox should be doing and focus on this, with a view to being very clear about these objectives and communicating this more clearly outside the Committee and members, dropping any work and activities that were supplemental or incidental to that focus (and perhaps was now being done by others anyway), and reconsidering how OxVox’s work would be managed.
The Committee all welcomed the opportunity to consider this as a general issue, and felt we had struggled with individual aspects in isolation, not necessarily dealing with them satisfactorily. It was helpful to take a step back in this way. Discussion led to the identification of the following key functions of OxVox:
• Acting as a link between the Club and Supporters, and representing supporter views to the Club,
• Working with the Club to promote it in the Oxfordshire community,
• Being aware of the way the Club is run so that fans can be confident it is being run properly.
From these aims it followed that the main functions of OxVox should be communication with members and communication with the Club. JF suggested we should look to establish a reasonably formal and regular schedule of meetings with the Club that would be semi-formal in format. A rota of Committee members would attend these to a) keep these manageable b) ensure that the Club hears a variety of perspectives. Producing and circulating notes would then be the principal update members received from OxVox. The Committee agreed with this plan.