Morton Club Together Updates

[TRVMP]

Don't know why I thought the agm was yesterday, it's today at 7pm.

[TRVMP]

Did anyone go? Take notes? 

[HamCam]

As I only attended in part and never took notes I was hoping someone more organised would respond but alas no. In the hope it helps some brief comments from my recollection of the AGM as follows:

- We will make a loss this year but it is manageable (for now anyway) largely due to the backing of our main sponsors in particular Dalrada. MCT got a notable mention as the funds generated are invaluable to the club in particular supporting transfer activity.

- The recent media comment on Dalrada was noted but was viewed as being overly dramatic and discussions are ongoing between the parties. The individuals in Dalrada assured the Club they remain supportive and are looking to extend the deal. The only concern I had was a lack of clarity on exactly how long the support would continue. 

- The Board were extremely grateful to all sponsors, old and new, especially given the challenging economic backdrop - every pound makes a difference to the Club.

- While a materially improved budget is in place this season it was confirmed it is dwarfed by the increased spending of others in the Championship. Our budget is thought to be in line with Airdrie. In the circumstances, we continue to punch above our weight. 

- The background to Derek Anderson leaving the youth set-up was he was operating as a contractor and the Club were looking to make him an employee - he declined. There was no ill feeling and the parties agreed to part ways. This provided the opportunity to review operations and the youth players are now fully integrated into the set-up under the direct supervision of the manager. The hope is this will result in more young lads progressing into the squads and ultimately the first-team.

- The Club are very keen to see a progression for youth but acknowledge the difficulties working in this part of the world with limited resources. In the past when the youth has been part of training they have not taken the opportunity often preferring their mobiles to working out in the gym. The manager has not been convinced the younger players have grasped the nettle but is willing to be convinced. 

- Th youth players are on standard contracts which offer compensation if they are picked up by other clubs. The Club maintain there is not a lot more they can do as all the lads have agents who are constantly whispering in their ears - in summary the agents are whoring the boys out to all and sundry. The Club maintain they will not stand in the way of any player progressing on to better things but confirmed no approach had been made for anyone despite the rumours.

- The Club has encouraged the players to be more open to being visible in the community and in engaging with fans but there has been a marked reluctance to get involved. In contrast the manager has always been willing to embrace this opportunity but it has not really moved on.

- The Club constantly applauded the manager and his team for the work they put in to make Morton successful on the park. So much of what is done is not visible to the fans, other than on match day, but as most of us know while the manager may not always get it right it is not for a lack of effort on his part. 

- The Board acknowledged and apologised for a lack of comms, at times. They asked though people recognise how small a staff there is at Cappielow with huge amounts of work down to volunteers. They held their hands up saying things could be better, encouraging anyone who wants to get involved to get in touch. It was also mentioned how much time has been taken up this season with unexpected events - the Jet saga, the storm damage to the stadium, the lack of home games after Christmas and the effect on cashflow, the 'ultras'...

As I have commented elsewhere on other individual issues including the 'ultras' I will leave it at that. If I have misinterpreted anything apologies it was not intended.

Edited March 11 by HamCam

[TRVMP]

Poll up for the MCT Player of the Year.

Personally I went for Blues. You could make a case for a few others, including Mullen and perhaps Lyall, maybe Ballantyne.

There's also a women's POTY vote but I abstained as I've never watched them and couldn't pick.

[Mr Toon]

Interesting fact:

Unless it needs to be updated, The number of  MCT members has not changed at all throughout the 'period of uncertainty' and the vote. Apparently no one scunnered enough to leave and no one so enthused by the new deal that they have joined.

Hopefully a few more will join soin.

[TRVMP]

MCT have called their AGM, announcing it today for the 18th of August. Now Wednesday 20th August, 7pm, Cappielow or online.

This is improper notice. It needs to be 14 days and this is only 13 (because today and the meeting day don't count.)

I've emailed them suggesting they reschedule. It's risky to undertake a meeting where motions could be challenged procedurally into the future.

edit: got a prompt reply, they're going to move it to the Wednesday. Glad it's sorted easily.

Edited August 4 by TRVMP

[vikingTON]

A reminder that the AGM is scheduled for this Wednesday coming - in case (like me) you thought you had forgotten and missed it already. 

Strange that there has been no discussion of the proposed amendments:

Proposed Amendment to Article 19.3:
19.3 The Company shall mantain a Register of Members and any person ceasing to be a
Member shall be removed from the register.
Proposed Additional Article:
19.5 Any Member who fails to pay their yearly subscription, an amount set by the
Company, either through monthly payments or a yearly one off donation to the
Company shall have their membership revoked.

 

The MCT 'Interim Board' recommends accepting both. Unless the intent/wording of the above proposal is clarified at the AGM, however, the proposed additional article 19.5 should be rejected, for the following reasons:

 

1) While I fully agree with the presumed aim of converting the model of MCT into an ongoing subscription group (correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe members still only need to provide their initial funding commitment - certainly 'original' MCT members couldn't be obliged to pay under the existing articles), a degree of basic self-awareness is in order here.

 

MCT leadership has just made its own contribution to a high summer farce at the club, while the much-vaunted communication aims from the last AGM fizzled away quite rapidly after a promising start. MCT needs to keep as many folk on board as possible right now - not rattle a tin at them and threaten to kick them out. 

 

2) The sanction of revoking membership is not the right method of changing behaviour. Let's say for argument's sake that Dougie Imrie or Neil Warnock did not commit to an ongoing monthly/annual payment when they signed up to MCT - will the 'beaks' at MCT Towers be slapping down an official notice threatening to sling them out the door? 

 

3) A better solution IMO would be to link annual subscriptions to an active membership (decision-making and candidate) role. To have a full voice in MCT and (hopefully) influence the club's direction, you should have to pay your way on an ongoing basis. If people prefer for whatever reason to retain a 'passive' membership without voting rights or eligibility to stand, then that's fine.

 

This would likely require a significant change to the existing articles of MCT (for next year's AGM), but spending more time redfining the purpose of the organisation is absolutely preferable to this rushed and 'stick only' approach of winning subscribers and influencing people.

 

4) In that year, MCT and the club should also explore adding the fabled incentives to ongoing subscription, such as discouts on merchandise, hospitality as well as seeking links with local businesses. There has been no visible progress on that front, while the likes of Arbroath have tied themselves very effectively with their local community. 000

 

5) While 'passive membership' (under my suggested system) of MCT would involve little regular decision-making rights, I would still prefer to have the key issue of the MCT stake/ownership at GMFC to be determined by all members, regardless of subscription status.

 

It is absolutely acceptable IMO for people to have signed up to support community ownership or any other motivation (perhaps not even Morton fans) but to not care about the year to year running of MCT and the club. But if/when the fundamental purpose of the current organisation is up for debate, they are fully entitled to a say given their role in helping MCT secure ownership in the first place. 

 

[Hoofballer]

Agree that this proposal should be voted against, it’s not the intent of MCT and membership from day one and no member should be excluded or removed on basis of voluntary financial contributions being delayed, reduced or missed.

Should have been fully debated with full membership in advance not tried to be squeezed through this evening when it’s likely that there will be a limited opportunity to discuss if we even can. 
Remember last meeting where people , particularly online , were not afforded chance to speak due to lack of time.

strongly object to these proposals which believe shall be harmful to our membership, we should never have an or else clause when looking for members/monies! This is a community club, why are we seeking to reduce membership!

[TopCat]

In addition to a plan for the next set of Dalrada negotiations, I'm hoping that the club will try to provide a bit more clarity on the roles and responsibilities of our Chairman, Board, GM and admin team.

Basic player registration admin errors have already cost us. It could've been much worse if those errors were in e.g. league or legal governance.

[TONofmemories]

Heard 9SBC made an arse of himself tonight. Proposing a motion, hounded, then abstained from his own proposal.

Cant wait to see the great revival 

[port-ton]

Had a zoom link for this but couldn’t make it in the end. Anyone who viewed it able to give the highlights? 

[dunning1874]

9 hours ago, port-ton said:

Had a zoom link for this but couldn’t make it in the end. Anyone who viewed it able to give the highlights? 

All six nominees for the board were elected is the main thing.

The proposal on memberships being revoked if payments stopped was voted against with even the member who proposed it abstaining in the end, after a lengthy discussion about the issues around it. The tone of many people against it wasn't so much "this is a terrible idea and we should never do anything like it" as much as "we should be thinking about something like tiered memberships in the long term rather than expelling anyone who stops paying" so it's something for the new board to look at.

From July member contributions have increased by £1000 a month as it stands between new members and increases from existing members, so we've hit the point where Dalrada are matching the increase, ie the extra £2K contributed by members as of the end of August also means £2K from Dalrada so £4K to the club.

Obviously a lot with plans for the future depends on the new board members so the existing board couldn't guarantee all the plans for the coming months, but they did say that things are in place to get the working groups going again after they were paused when everything kicked off in May, and some of them had been quite far down the line with plans on improving communications, getting a proper member database set up, more merchandise to sell, etc. They're hoping to expand the number of volunteers involved to get these things moving again.

Joint board meetings with the GMFC board have been restarted and there were no illusions about how much work needs to be done to rebuild that relationship and get proper transparency.

[Jamie_M]

1 hour ago, dunning1874 said:

From July member contributions have increased by £1000 a month as it stands between new members and increases from existing members, so we've hit the point where Dalrada are matching the increase, ie the extra £2K contributed by members as of the end of August also means £2K from Dalrada so £4K to the club.

...more merchandise to sell, etc.

Would hope the new board members are all over that side of things remembering that money raised by MCT and distributed to the club doesn't just mean member subs and any amount they raise at MCT level (not the club) on things like merch and events can also be doubled by Dalrada.

[The Bewilderedbeast]

They are also working on another coin to be ready for Xmas.

Profits from the 150th Anniversary one brought in just over £2000. Not an earth shattering amount, but every little helps.

[Greacen2000]

The meeting started with the news about Remi and a minutes silence.  MCT will be working with the club in agreeing on what is appropriate in terms of for the family, hospital staff, charity etc.

Apologies were given with MCTs current representatives on the club board being absent from the meeting.  Then followed a board update giving high level overview of what has happened in the past year in terms of overall financial contributions to the club, members who have joined & left the board.  Not a huge amount of note here.  The turmoil of the summer was mentioned but not discussed in detail

It was confirmed that all nominees have been approved to join the board.

More detailed financial breakdown was then given.  Overall contributions from MCT to the club have dropped by about 20K in the past year.  This is attributed to a 50k per annum contribution from a benefactor coming to an end, which has been offset by a slight rise in member contributions.  A further 10K was given to MCT as part of the estate of a member who passed away and this money has been given to MITC to go towards match tickets for deprived/low income people in the community.

2 amendments were put forward - the first one was just correcting an error in wording replacing "charity" with "company", which passed with ease.

The 2nd amendment was proposed by Stuart Duncan around revoking membership if payments are stopped.  Stuart pitched it as a way of protecting MCT income by discouraging people from cancelling/reducing contributions.  This was faced with a fair amount of questions and disagreement.  In general people seemed to agree that work needs to be done in this area, but that kicking people out of MCT probably isn't the best way to go about it in the first instance.  More needs to be done to generate new & increased contributions while looking at ways of allowing people who cannot afford £10 per month to be involved - both tiered memberships & payment holidays were mentioned alongside providing more incentives for people to join & contribute.  Gordon Richie highlighted that in its current form, the proposal would lead to a benefactor who has contributed over 100K to MCT being at risk of losing their membership if they cancelled a £10 direct debit.  Stuart was given the opportunity to withdraw the proposal but did not take it up.  It went forward to the vote and was not passed.  The new board will take the action to look into this area in more detail before coming back to the membership with further proposals.

During the discussion on the 2nd amendment a lot of other information came out.  It seems like due to legacy issues with gaps in admin/process when MCT was first set up, we do not know exactly how much any given member has contributed in total, and aren't even exactly sure how many non paying members there are.  Work on implementing a proper CRM with a database of all member details was stalled due to the turmoil over the summer but should be resuming now that things are settled.  This work needs to take place before we will have the ability to run targeted funding campaigns or implement tiered memberships etc.

All in all it was a pretty constructive meeting with a lot less fireworks than might have been expected.  I would say that the news of Remis passing would have understandably been a factor in some of the discussions being a bit more muted.

Edited August 21 by Greacen2000

[TONofmemories]

On 8/21/2025 at 3:58 PM, Greacen2000 said:

The meeting started with the news about Remi and a minutes silence.  MCT will be working with the club in agreeing on what is appropriate in terms of for the family, hospital staff, charity etc.

Apologies were given with MCTs current representatives on the club board being absent from the meeting.  Then followed a board update giving high level overview of what has happened in the past year in terms of overall financial contributions to the club, members who have joined & left the board.  Not a huge amount of note here.  The turmoil of the summer was mentioned but not discussed in detail

It was confirmed that all nominees have been approved to join the board.

More detailed financial breakdown was then given.  Overall contributions from MCT to the club have dropped by about 20K in the past year.  This is attributed to a 50k per annum contribution from a benefactor coming to an end, which has been offset by a slight rise in member contributions.  A further 10K was given to MCT as part of the estate of a member who passed away and this money has been given to MITC to go towards match tickets for deprived/low income people in the community.

2 amendments were put forward - the first one was just correcting an error in wording replacing "charity" with "company", which passed with ease.

The 2nd amendment was proposed by Stuart Duncan around revoking membership if payments are stopped.  Stuart pitched it as a way of protecting MCT income by discouraging people from cancelling/reducing contributions.  This was faced with a fair amount of questions and disagreement.  In general people seemed to agree that work needs to be done in this area, but that kicking people out of MCT probably isn't the best way to go about it in the first instance.  More needs to be done to generate new & increased contributions while looking at ways of allowing people who cannot afford £10 per month to be involved - both tiered memberships & payment holidays were mentioned alongside providing more incentives for people to join & contribute.  Gordon Richie highlighted that in its current form, the proposal would lead to a benefactor who has contributed over 100K to MCT being at risk of losing their membership if they cancelled a £10 direct debit.  Stuart was given the opportunity to withdraw the proposal but did not take it up.  It went forward to the vote and was not passed.  The new board will take the action to look into this area in more detail before coming back to the membership with further proposals.

During the discussion on the 2nd amendment a lot of other information came out.  It seems like due to legacy issues with gaps in admin/process when MCT was first set up, we do not know exactly how much any given member has contributed in total, and aren't even exactly sure how many non paying members there are.  Work on implementing a proper CRM with a database of all member details was stalled due to the turmoil over the summer but should be resuming now that things are settled.  This work needs to take place before we will have the ability to run targeted funding campaigns or implement tiered memberships etc.

All in all it was a pretty constructive meeting with a lot less fireworks than might have been expected.  I would say that the news of Remis passing would have understandably been a factor in some of the discussions being a bit more muted.

Not having a basic database is tragic. Do the club themselves even have anything?

[Greacen2000]

10 hours ago, TONofmemories said:

Not having a basic database is tragic. Do the club themselves even have anything?

No idea - I expect the info on season ticket holders etc is held by fanbase but they must have some sort of database on the back end to support tontv subscriptions etc.

MCT have purchased a CRM tool (sheepCRM) but apparently the work on fully implementing it was paused when all the stuff over the summer happened.  This needs to be resumed as a priority now things have settled down and the new board is in place as it is key to how we engage with members and manage membership & fund raising efforts.  In lieu of this I’m guessing the best case scenario is that its probably being run on a spreadsheet

Edited August 23 by Greacen2000

[irnbru]

2 hours ago, Greacen2000 said:

No idea - I expect the info on season ticket holders etc is held by fanbase but they must have some sort of database on the back end to support tontv subscriptions etc.

MCT have purchased a CRM tool (sheepCRM) but apparently the work on fully implementing it was paused when all the stuff over the summer happened.  This needs to be resumed as a priority now things have settled down and the new board is in place as it is key to how we engage with members and manage membership & fund raising efforts.  In lieu of this I’m guessing the best case scenario is that its probably being run on a spreadsheet

There must be something. You can log into your account on the site and it has your membership details, etc. Maybe they just don't know how to use it or something. 

[Roger McQueen]

There has to be a database of sorts with fan information. The sheep system was mentioned over 12 months ago at an MCT meeting, may have been 18 months + now I think of it, so clearly there is some sort of issue with implementation. That would have come at a cost, purchasing the software etc 

[vikingTON]

16 hours ago, TONofmemories said:

Not having a basic database is tragic. Do the club themselves even have anything?

I'm pretty sure that they *do* have a basic database, but it doesn't record all payments ever made from years ago though, to determine who should be getting warning letters/emptied for not contributing the full £240 original pledge (a contested figure/requirement).

Which isn't surprising given that there was absolutely no need for a start-up volunteer led organisation to painstakingly record that at the time, recalling the practical limitations of the pandemic too.

It was quite simply a terrible proposal and incomplete records was only one of about 15 reasons why it was emptied.