What happens next? Let everyone know!

[Hedgehog]

It’s great news that we have a new club and that it has been accepted into the league.

The main thing now is to ensure that everyone fan who might be interested in watching the team, and every person / business that might be interested in supporting the venture, actually knows about it. For those who are leading the AFC initiative I suggest you consider the following actions to maximise support for our new club rather than the Nene Park setup:
1. Contact the RDFC Supporters Trust and ask them to use their mailing list to contact everyone who is or has been a member of the Trust. In the early days, the Trust had a huge membership of people and many of our fans do not have internet skills or email. You need to write to these people and tell them what is happening and to dispel the lies and rumours that are being fed to them. We don’t want them to be tempted to attend Nene Park on a “it’s better than nothing” basis just because they don’t know what’s happening.
2. Contact every business that has sponsored or supported RDFC. This can easily be done by trawling through old programmes. Look for player sponsors, board sponsors, advertisers, etc and write to them and encourage them to back the new club. You might find they have already been approached by the IL or KC, but as one of them I have not and if I was I’d tell them where to go.
3. Use contacts via Supporters Direct and fans clubs organisations (like the Football Supporters Federation) to get the message out about the new club. At the same time, look at ways of getting the message across about what has happened to us. Who knows, away fans might chose to boycott Nene Park just as some of us would never step through the door at MK Dons.

Whatever you decide to do, the main thing is to make sure as many people as possible can make an informed choice about whether to cross to the dark side or to support our new club.

[Dirty Boy]

This is not being negative, but we need to do things right. There could be an issue with number 1 due to the Data Protection Act, information has been gathered for the use of the supporters trust in association with Rushden & Diamonds FC Ltd, AFC Rushden & Diamonds is a different legal entity and to avoid a breach in the DPA it may well be prudent for the supporters trust to approach it's members about this issue (mailing lists). It only takes one person to raise a concern about how the information is being used by a different legal entity to cause problems.

[bozzer]

We met with supporters direct last night and indeed spoke about the points you raised.

We have a marketing meeting scheduled for early next week where i expect the sponsorship pricing will be confirmed.

We are in the process of getting constitutionalised which will unlock quite a few new things,

Exciting times ahead.

[Hedgehog]

This is not being negative, but we need to do things right. There could be an issue with number 1 due to the Data Protection Act, information has been gathered for the use of the supporters trust in association with Rushden & Diamonds FC Ltd, AFC Rushden & Diamonds is a different legal entity and to avoid a breach in the DPA it may well be prudent for the supporters trust to approach it's members about this issue (mailing lists). It only takes one person to raise a concern about how the information is being used by a different legal entity to cause problems.

While the points you raise about data protection are correct, they do not prevent the Trust writing to its members and ex members to tell them what is happening. I did not mean to suggest that they would provide a list to AFC Rushden and Diamonds.