The Supporters' Club looked into the possibility of forming a Supporters Trust and following a ballot of members, it was decided to go ahead. It is called a Supporters Trust At Reading, and is known by the initials - STAR.
STAR now has its own website, which you can go to here. You can download a membership form there, as well as read about the latest activity.
Membership of STAR is open to all Reading fans. In the first year (2002/03) the benefits of membership will be similar to those offered by the Supporters' Club and the membership fee will stay the same at £5. There is also a "limited edition" Founder Member's package available, costing £25 for two years.
The meeting to launch this took place on Monday, 18th March in the Jazz Cafe, Madejski Stadium starting. Joel Hufford from BBC Radio Berkshire chaired the meeting, with Nicky Hammond plus Brian Lomax and Lee Shailer of Supporters Direct on hand.
The rest of this section explains more about Supporters Trusts, and is taken from the press release issued by the working party that the Supporters' Club set up to investigate whether it was appopriate to form a Supporters Trust at Reading.
The development of the Supporters Trust proposal was started by the Supporters' Club Committee. Other keen Reading fans joined the dozen-strong working party.
In the past year over 40 Supporters Trusts have been formed at clubs large and small around Britain, including Tottenham and Celtic, Aylesbury and Swindon. Supporters Trusts are a more modern, professional and business-like version of Supporters Clubs with a greater range of responsibilities like community involvement and shareholder representation.
"In the past couple of years Reading Football Supporters' Club (RFSC) has been very successful in raising its profile and membership and having a more responsive, consultative dialogue with the football club," said RFSC campaigns co-ordinator Roger Titford. "But our constitution, our powers and our image appear dated now. Creating a Supporters Trust out of the Supporters Club and attracting and including a new range of people to make a broader, bigger, better organisation is our goal. We hope our members and other fans will share this view. This launch is the first step."
The five key advantages of moving to Trust status
are:
- a more powerful organisation because it is more publicly
accountable, openly democratic, financially secure and ideally,
shareholding
- a wider-ranging and more inclusive organisation because of its
community-minded objectives and involvement of external parties
like local business, council, football in the community
- a more modern and professional type of organisation and
recognised as such in the football world
a way of preserving and linking the strengths of the Supporters
Club to the opportunities for new ways of involving fans in their
clubs
- a platform for turning Reading into a real football town to
match the anticipated success on the pitch and of the stadium
A government-backed organisation, Supporters Direct, will be helping the trust with advice and grants during the set-up phase and speaking at the launch meeting. Supporters Direct is a response to the Football Task Force's recommendation for greater, democratic fan involvement in the running of football.
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