Emails out regarding the merger for any members on here.
Voting will be happening fairly soon by the looks of it.
Rules and Policies Relating to Governance and the Merger Proposals
We can now provide members with a suite of documents for review which sets out how the amalgamated Community Benefit Society (CBS) will operate and manage some of the issues which have been discussed during the process.
It was important to agree the rules and side policies in advance of a vote so that members can see that some of the concerns that they had raised have been addressed.
In particular, there is a detailed Conflict of Interests Policy and enhanced levels of disclosure built into the Elections Policy which will be used for a full board election which will take place in 2023. The interim board will be formed from an equal number of existing Shakers Community and Bury FC Supporters’ Society board members who will be tasked with establishing the new society as quickly as possible and putting into motion the actions required to make the amalgamation a success. The key actions are summarized in a Terms of Reference for the Interim Board which will also be published. In the event of a locked board decision on any critical matter members will be asked to vote.
Both Shakers Community and Bury FC Supporters’ Society will continue to exist as legal entities during this interim period so please continue with your membership subscriptions as usual. The new CBS will be based on a subscription model of £5 per month or £60 per annum and we will simply credit any money paid into Shakers Society into the new CBS for membership and voting purposes until such time as we are ready for you to transfer your card or direct debit payments. Please do not cancel your payment until then as they are absolutely critical for the running of the club.
Please digest the documents and we will host an online Q&A session for members to explain next steps and take questions on them. After answering several hundred questions in writing already we felt it would be best to use the online Q&A at this point to address the latest paperwork. We will issue details on this shortly.
We have been working through the fine detail of the process for the vote, which has thrown up a number of procedural issues which have taken time to resolve. They are simply the product of a complicated legal process and the desire to achieve as much consistency as possible across Societies with two slightly different rules. It is important we get this right, but we are almost finished.
Following a very thorough due diligence exercise we are pleased to confirm that the current online voting system used for previous member votes has been approved for the forthcoming merger vote.
The system has been reviewed by the company who will act, subject to contract, as independent scrutineer for both societies. Shakers Community Society Limited made an amendment to its rules when it was authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority in 2020 which allows us to use an appropriate electronic voting system rather than paper ballots or show of hands at a physical event. This has allowed us to engage with a good number of members, especially during the pandemic. Familiarity with the system should improve voting numbers for the merger vote also.
Bury FC Supporters Society operate under older rules which do not allow electronic voting, and this has been one of the points of detail under recent discussion, but they will use the same independent scrutineers for consistency who will manage a ‘paper’ proxy voting process with forms which can be submitted by post or email.
For Shakers Community Society Limited, the independent scrutineer will hold administrator access to the system to observe all aspects of the vote. We will also be subject to an audit of our membership lists, as happens every year as part of our financial audit. This should give all parties comfort that the vote is conducted in accordance with the rules.
To ensure we use the most accurate membership data we will extract the membership lists directly from our payment service providers, Stripe and GoCardless, and then manually add anyone who has paid by cheque.
Whilst this will give us the most accurate list of current subscriptions, it is likely that some people will no longer be using the email address which they used when they set up their subscription with Stripe or GoCardless.
To ensure everyone has the opportunity to vote we will undertake the following:
We have stopped taking new membership subscriptions from today. Membership renewals will continue as normal. Anyone with existing subscriptions which fail temporarily after this point can still resolve the issue provided there is a legitimate reason e.g. a failure due to change of bank card or temporary problem with online banking systems.
We may issue a test email or vote purely for the purposes of allowing members to feed back if they did not receive the email, so that we can amend any data before the actual vote.
Voting will be left open for 21 days, which will allow anyone who has not received the vote form by email to contact us and we can address the problem.
A successful vote to amalgamate the two societies requires approval by at least two-thirds of the members who vote, from both societies.
The decision to return to Gigg Lane and to change the name of the club to Bury Football Club requires a simple majority of over 50%, but this is conditional on the resolution to amalgamate being approved by both societies.
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