Salford Red Devils Community Share Scheme

I will be putting my £250 in, it is not much but every bit helps #TogetherStronger Salford

I'm looking forward to seeing the prospectus. I wasn't able to stay yesterday so missed the video and speeches. Everyone at the club deserves a huge pat on the back for this and the other work they've been doing. Hopefully, the scheme raises a lot of capital for the club, as it's a one-time raise it'll be interesting to see what the plans are with the money. I'm sure the club have plans in place to maximise the benefit.

It also puts more ownness on us as fans to get involved more, everyone who invests gets an equal share and equal voice. It's time for lots of ideas to come to the fore for discussion. Then identifying the ideas that are both quick and effective wins to be implemented imminently and the ideas that offer the best long-term benefits. Maybe we'll find more people willing to volunteer for things and the creation of new roles to implement certain ideas.

The three points I'd like to see ideas on are:
1) Generating new fans (long-term)
2) Pre-match experience
3) Increase local press and visibility

I've mentioned this elsewhere but my two-pennies worth on the above points (and I'm aware they may be terrible ideas but let's try and collect ideas):

For me, touch rugby is the way to engage schools (have a school league or regular competitions) and people in the community (run public tournaments) to develop long-term fans. We could also target amateur RL and RU clubs, and American football teams (Manchester Titans?), and have tournaments across all ages. I really think RL as a whole need to take this approach, the NFL have done it globally with flag football (I know they have lots more money but the concept and model is the same); it just opens the door for almost everyone - flag football has boomed and they've had Nike (I know we won't get them) get involved with sponsorship and equipment in the past.

Here's a couple of links:
www.growthofagame.com/2016/11/introducing-american-football-to-english-schools/
playfootball.nfl.com/coaches/growing-nfl-flag-football/

We could make some of the tournaments for charities and link up with them for the extra press. Maybe, we could offer season tickets to the winning team? That gets a group of people who enjoyed touch to come to the games regularly, not just as a one-off, which builds up a habit. They are also in a friendship group so can attend together… maybe offer each winner the opportunity of a second season ticket at half price – for their partner?

Maybe we could try and get local businesses to enter teams in a comp specifically aimed at newbies, or sponsors to enter teams? All of these events could potentially be sponsored too, especially those with a charitable aim that comes with press. The events don't all have to be local, we could look to run tournaments once a year in other locations - Wales, London, Edinburgh etc... these people may not start attending Salford games but they may support from afar, purchase merchandise or enter the share scheme.

Pre-match experience
How about skill challenges each week that people can take part in (all ages). Kick the ball (grubber/chip) to land in a certain spot on the ground or in a bin. Throw the ball through different holes - from standing and from a dummy half position. Little kick and catch competition. Conversations over small posts for kids. That kind of thing.

Can anyone volunteer to do face-painting for an hour or so pre-game - give the volunteer a free meal? Just charge £1 to cover the paint costs so it's very affordable for parents.

Increase local press and visibility

Maybe run a yearly Salford music festival weekend... north-west bands inside the stadium which are ticketed to bring money in but also have a stage in the car park where people can put themselves down for 15-20 minute stints to showcase themselves and have fun - these people wouldn't be paid, it's just something they can do if they want. Charge a small fee for entry into this area and then have a more expensive ticket for ground entry where bands and singers are doing longer sets. We could also offer dining in 1873.

I'll have a proper read of this thread later and comment a little more.

However, I've already checked the bank balance over the weekend and I've got a few quid earmarked for the share scheme so just need to see exactly how much I can donate.

It'll definitely be boosted though thanks to the generosity of my local bookmaker Mr David Pluck. I had a £1 10 team football accumulator that came in yesterday (cheers Newcastle Utd😎) at 340/1 so a nice chunk of that will be added to my already planned donation.😁

Now if only that quid stake would've been £100.....🤔

Edit: I should've really read the tier thing before I replied to the e-mail from the club.🤦‍♂️ F*ck it, I've upgraded. No wife, no kids, no mortgage = no excuse not to!😁

Well it's live now. Hope they get to and then and smash the initial target. Just think, you could pay one footballer for one week with that much!

Over £15,000 now so a decent start with 46 contributions

At the current rate of investment, the club needs 815 investors to reach the target of 250k.

lhred, you can't have a direct debit in this case. You are purchasing a share in the club and all members can only have one share so it's a one-time purchase, though in the future I believe you can increase your tier if you wish.

If people wanted to make a yearly donation, the club could look at that as a separate initiative. It's pretty easy to set up monthly or yearly subscriptions via the website - a couple of hours of work. You can even create tiers that people can swap between. Also, using Woo Payments the club would only be charged 1.4% + 20p per transaction, which is a really good fee - it actually uses Stripe but going direct through Stripe is 1.5% - still good. PayPal and Amazon are awful providers. It could be worth putting the idea to the club in the future. May be anyone who donated went in draws for things like platinum dining for two (weekly) or a season ticket (yearly draw) or an experience-type event.

Promising early uptake on the shares but I think it might be a slow burner. Some people on monthly pay won't be getting paid until the end of this week and others will be crunching the numbers to see if/what they can afford to put into the scheme.

I'm not overly familiar with Crowdfunding but I have seen a few previous accounts and it always baffles me how people are able to generate thousands to "help Britney got from a 34b to a 40DD" or to "help Bert & Mavis raise £500 to pay little kitty whiskers vets bill".😁

Schemes like this to enable sporting institutions/community heartbeats to flourish (or in some cases survive) should be what it's all about but I'm not sure how much faith I have in today's society!

Anyway, I've got another 5x £1 midweek footy accumulators so if any of them come in I'll add it to the fund.😁