Communities & Communications

The issue of racism and football has continued to make the headlines recently with high profile incidents during Premiership and Europa League games. Attracting less profile is the work being done by FC United in the community; we have always sought opportunities to bring together communities and people of different ethnic backgrounds as a way of addressing racial tension and challenging mistrust.

We work in areas of Manchester where there are tensions between different ethnic communities and we seek to bring young people of different backgrounds together through football to challenge stereotypes based on ethnicity. This has been a particular focus of our work in Cheetham Hill, Moston and Moss Side.

Communities and Community Shares
Our community work is far more extensive than what people expect from a football club of our size and is characterised by the fact that we always seek to work in partnership with other community organisations - we do not seek to replace them or undermine their chance to grow and prosper.

Racism is often based on stereotyping and lack of knowledge about others from a different background. FC United’s regular People United Days are designed to bring people together demonstrating that the diversity in our city is something to celebrate.

The community share scheme edges ever closer to the £1.6m target. We still have about £13k to sign over from the old scheme and we have additional standing order pledges of about £14k to come in. We are making good progress; ideally we would like to get all our funds in by 7th March to reassure our external funders. We have advertised for a professional fundraiser this week to bring in some additional funding.

News and Communications
Our progress attracts regular media interest from overseas. This week we have received enquiries about club activities and progress from journalists in Spain, Denmark and Kazakstan! Closer to home, Kyle Jacobs has a piece in this week’s North and East Manchester Advertiser and there has been a flurry of mentions for our share scheme as it topped £1.5m. Our work with community groups in Moston this week included activities at the Sure Start Centre. We have held coaching sessions and volunteering events plus we put on a fundraising workshop for residents and community groups. Passing on our knowledge and experience to other community groups in this way helps them gain access to funding for their own work which then helps to give other activities a lift.

The communications survey that we launched earlier this week has seen over 700 people complete it, with some great suggestions for improving the way that we get our message across. A report will follow once the full results have been collated. Our Twitter feed is used by a growing number of people to get news on FC United and we gained our 20,000th follower this week, which I am told gives us more followers than virtually any club outside the Premiership.

We received some warm words on Twitter from Frickley manager Peter Rinkavage after the visit of Frickley to Gigg Lane last Saturday ’As opposing manager I’ve got to say I was once again impressed by your club. Great support, super manager, best footballing team.’

The co-owners meeting we held prior to the Frickley game was well attended with updates on the ground development and questions to the board. A full report of the proceedings is being finalised and will be posted shortly. Our matchday volunteers made an extra early start to get to the meeting and then set up ready for the game. It is all too easy to take for granted the terrific effort that goes in to putting a game on and FC United would not be able to function without the 100 or more volunteers that make a matchday happen. Every match going supporter owes them a big thank you.

Volunteers
The volunteers that are often the first to arrive on a matchday are members of our merchandise team who have fitted out the new cabin with more racking on which to display the club’s gear and make it easier for supporters to see what is on offer. Board member Paul Farrell, Club Secretary Lindsey Howard and Community manager Robin Pye met up with representatives from Manchester volunteering centre to discuss ways of improving our volunteer management. There is a lot of expertise around Manchester on managing volunteers which we hope to benefit from so that we can improve our own systems and give our volunteers better support. Lindsey also attended a club secretary development day organised by Supporters Direct which looked at governance issues, rules and regulations.

And finally, a thank you
Finally, we received this thank you from a couple who come to FC games and wanted some photos for a ’memory box’ for their foster daughter who has now been adopted, so they wanted to give her a photo to keep of her early life. The pictures are in Mick Dean’s gallery from the Frickley match click here

Below is their letter of thanks to the office:

Dear Sir/Madam

I would like to give thanks to the club and players, especially Vinnie for arranging a photo to be taken on Saturday 18th February of our foster daughter Elle-Jo before the match. A big thanks also goes to Mike Dean who kindly took the photograph and later emailed me the pictures.

This meant a lot to me and my family as we will have another memory for Elle-Jo and ourselves to keep, as she will be soon leaving us to be adopted.

A big, big thank-you