Survey results and actions
Firstly thank you to everyone who completed the survey earlier this year. Since its completion it has been reviewed by the committee and also the Clubmark sub-committee to ensure we do act upon points raised. Below is a summary of actions being taken. In brief form within the first few paragraphs of this email, and in more detail if you wish to read all.
There were many points raised and we thank everyone for their comments. It is not possible to deal with every point, so we have looked at the areas where there was a clear view about areas that needed change. There are responses to some individual comments at the end.
A total of 82 members completed the survey. Not as many as we would hope for, but sufficient to provide some clear feedback. A reminder that the survey was the time for members to give their clear and honest views and those who did not complete this should therefore not be disappointed if areas they think need attention are not dealt with.
In Brief – Follow up from survey
- Club being improved with new windows. Initial phase replacing windows in poor condition around kitchen. 2nd phase now brought forward to July as we have just received a grant for £3,000. 3rd phase to be completed next year – finances permitting
- Ladies toilet have been redecorated.
- Gents toilet to be refurbished after final windows installed
- Improved Wi-Fi to be installed next week
- The website has been refreshed
- The end of year dinner, has been changed to our “end of season celebration” and tickets will be sold far earlier. The date is Saturday 14th October, with the colts presentation evening on Friday 13th October.
- We will try and increase our numbers of social events
In more detail:
Raising Funds to continue to improve the facilities
Not surprisingly members didn’t want an increase in subs. There was no increase in subs last year, so realistically there is likely to be some increase for the 2018 season but these are likely to be mainly inflationary.
Bar increases – whilst 30% were definitely against, 45% gave it some support. Prices are traditionally only increased once a year in April. Last year’s increase was low meaning our gross profit reduced to 42.7%. We have traditionally kept very close to, but below, 50% and the intention is to return to this level but to introduce the increases over 2 years. This will still keep our prices substantially below most other local establishments.
There was a desire to increase social events to raise money and we will work on this.
There was a minority of members, but still a reasonable percentage that thought we should be satisfied with our present facilities and not raise additional monies. The committee took the view that we were not over spending and to keep our facilities at a high quality level, we needed to keep maintaining and improving.
Sponsorship – generally agreed that we should try and raise more this way. This most be the preferred route, but is not an easy option. We have tried without success to have an existing member to take on this role. If you know of somebody…. In the meantime we have sent to all members details of sponsorship deals available.
Comments were made about hiring out our facilities more, and this will be reviewed.
Comments were made about trying to obtain more grant funding. We are always looking at this (and recently obtained a further £3,000 for the windows). Including the money for the new changing rooms, the club has obtained over £250,00 in grant funding over the last 10 years.
ECC is one club
It was pleasing to see that 91% would recommend ECC to a friend. But the survey showed there is still more work needed to pull together the 3 section – Players, Colts and their parents, Social members.
Two meetings for colts parents were attended by nearly 100 members and it is hoped that the club explained what it is trying to achieve. The meetings had positive responses.
We have started and under 21 committee to obtain feedback from our younger members. After a few meetings representatives attended a management committee meeting this week to give feedback.
If there are specific areas you believe need to be addressed, please feed back to the committee.
Socials and Dinner Dance
The dinner dance was poorly attended last year and we have listened to feedback. It will be relaunched this year as our “End of Season Celebration”. The date has already been published – SATURDAY 14TH OCTOBER, so please make a note of the date now and more details will follow.
This will be in the marquee and preceded on FRIDAY 13TH OCTOBER for the colt squads awards evening. Costs for the colts has already been included in the annual subscription, so it is just a small charge for the adults. Again please make a note.
The Friday night colts have matches for an end of season event on SATURDAY 16TH SEPTEMBER.
The Funday is on SUNDAY 28TH AUGUST.
Other social events will follow.
What do the 14 – 24 age group want at the club?
We had 13 responses to this. 3 points came out:
- Clubhouse needs to be updated to be more attractive to young members
- Vending machines for food and drinks
- Mores social activities
Clubhouse changes – different people have different ideas, so we will canvas some more opinions before making any decisions. Please feel free to give your views to any committee member. But there were thoughts it needs to be modernised, especially with some up to date pictures.
Vending machine – we need to understand the reason for this as if the club is open, the bar is normally open. However any additional sales are not likely to cover the cost of a machine.
Communication
Overall members were fairly happy with communication, although there is still room for improvement in emails and the website. For some reason, and nobody is quite certain why, Facebook has 3 ECC sites, so we need to find out where these have been started and only 1 survives. The fixture card was still popular – still supplies behind the bar if you haven’t got one for this season.
Volunteers
There were several comments that the club was run by a few and more volunteers were needed. It is a voluntarily run club and we are concerned that we will have volunteers to run the club in years to come. It is acknowledged that we have not been as good as we could have been in encouraging members to take part in certain areas. But we have been successful with colts with a substantial number helping with running the squads and Friday nights.
Every colts’ parent who offered help on the renewal form was contacted by email, but the response to this was fairly low. There is still work to do, and again please keep feeding back with ideas.
Once again – thanks to everyone who responded. Please feel free to keep on providing suggestions. The survey was anonymous so it has not been possible to reply to individual comments.
Peter Tilsed