The delayed Lewes FC Supporters Club AGM will take place on Tuesday 16th January in the Rook Inn and is open to all Supporters Club members. Full details of the 2023 AGM can be found here. Ahead of the meeting, here is our annual report.
Normally our annual reports are written by the chair. Sadly, that’s not possible this year following the tragic death of our elected chair, Dave Evans, last month. Consequently, this year’s report is written by the Supporters Club committee.
It’s testament to Dave’s energy and leadership that, even though he was seriously ill for much of last year, the Supporters Club continues to go from strength to strength. We have more members than ever before, have raised tens of thousands of pounds to improve facilities at The Dripping Pan, and help to co-ordinate volunteers to deliver many of those ground improvements, not to mention co-ordinating volunteers on match days.
We do a lot more than that, too, as you’ll see from the report below – not least providing a strong, independent voice for the club’s supporter base.
Remember, membership of the Lewes FC Supporters Club is entirely free – you can sign up here with nothing more than your email address, if you haven’t already done so. The more members we have, the stronger our voice. Plus, members receive our regular newsletters, letting you know about social events and other fundraisers, as well as opportunities to vote on how we spend our money and on other matters.
Supporters Club membership numbers
Supporters Club membership has now passed the 300 mark, with 305 active members at the time of writing. We believe this is more members than at any time in the Supporters Club’s long history.
Our online presence continues to grow too.
The Lewes FC Supporters group on Facebook now has more than 1,400 members. On X (formerly Twitter), we have just shy of 1,300 followers who subscribe for live updates from matches and more.
Our website recorded a huge surge in numbers in 2023, with visitors coming to read match reports and other Supporters Club news. Last year we recorded over 19,000 visitors and more than 30,000 page views – roughly double the figures we recorded in 2022.
Our new data dashboard provides quarterly updates on membership numbers and our financials.
Representing the fans
During 2023 the Supporters Club met regularly with the club’s staff and board members to co-ordinate our activities, agree fundraising projects and to represent the club’s fan base.
During the Mercury 13 investment proposal period, we polled our members on whether the investment proposal should be put to an owner’s vote (before the club decided to hold one) and whether members supported the proposed investment. We believe this helped shape the club’s approach and provided valuable insight into the views of fans, which were markedly different from those of the wider ownership base.
The Supporters Club will continue to represent the voice of the fans in 2024. If you have any issues you think the Supporters Club should be championing, then please send us an email to hello@lewessupporters.club or talk to one of the Supporters Club committee at any men’s or women’s game.
We desperately want to represent the full spectrum of the club’s fans, so if you think there’s something we’re missing, please get in touch.
Match day volunteering
Men’s match day volunteers have increased greatly this past 12 months, making the match day experience run much more smoothly.
Numbers have increased at women’s games too, but we could really do with more volunteers. Roles on match days include working on the turnstiles, hospitality, meet & greet and match announcer.
If you’d like to help with either men’s or women’s match days, please contact Barry Haffenden at kinghuffles@gmail.com.
Maintenance at the Dripping Pan
The Supporters Club’s maintenance crew has helped deliver a series of upgrades to The Dripping Pan this year.
The major one was the installation of the seats donated from Wembley Stadium. Supporters Club members worked alongside club staff to remove all of the existing seating and replace it with the plush, padded Wembley seats. This involved collecting the seats from Wembleys, hundreds of hours of arduous removal and installation work, and then plenty of cleaning. It wasn’t only tens of drill bits that were knackered after that job.
Work has also been completed to improve the seating for disabled supporters at the top of the main stand, with Wembley seats fitted in the bays and the safety bar lowered to improve the view.
Ahead of the Women’s FA Cup quarter-final, the Supporters Club helped fit 100+ wooden planks to the metal fencing opposite the changing rooms to improve player privacy and security. Not to mention all the volunteer hours that were required to get the game on itself.
In 2023, we also concreted in new ground sockets for the drop bolts on the main gates to the Pan, we fitted bracing bars to the warm-up goals to help us lift them off before games, and we’ve undertaken numerous painting, weeding, fixing, spraying, unblocking and mending tasks throughout the year.
Our maintenance crew meets every Thursday to apply the elbow grease, drink tea and consume unhealthy amounts of HobNobs. Numbers have swelled recently, but there’s always something to do at The Pan, so if you want to get out of the house and join the Thursday Club, drop us an email at hello@lewessupporters.club.
Fundraising
We had a very successful year of fundraising in our 2022/23 financial year. Our bank balance at the start of the year was £7,214 and we finished the year with £20,736 in the bank.
Match day fundraising generates the vast bulk of our income. The raffle is our biggest income stream, raising more than £7,200 in the financial year, with another £1,426 raised from the New Year raffle alone.
Golden Goal contributed more than £4,000, while our monthly Pan For Gold draw added almost £3,500 to the coffers.
Other income streams include badge sales, sponsored walks, our annual golf day and quiz nights. We’re always keen to add more events to our social/fundraising roster, so if you have any ideas or want to help organise an event, please get in touch at hello@lewesupporters.club.
You can read our full financial report for 2022/23 here.
Where does that money go?
Almost all of the money raised by the Supporters Club is designated specifically for improving facilities for supporters at The Dripping Pan.
To that end, our two biggest financial commitments for the forthcoming year relate to improving toilet facilities.
Many fans will have noticed the new block being installed adjacent to the main stand. This will provide much-improved permanent facilities for disabled supporters, as well as better facilities for players. The second part of the project will see the temporary toilets at the back of the Philcox Stand replaced with a new permanent facility in 2024.
The Supporters Club has already contributed £10,000 to the building of these facilities, and has pledged to provide a further £15,000 by the end of the current season.
We will continue to work with the club to identify ways to improve facilities at The Dripping Pan.
What else do we do?
Even though this report is now well over a thousand words long (sorry!), we’ve not yet covered everything that the Supporters Club does. Here’s a brief overview of other activities that we’ve conducted in the past year:
- Regular collections for the Lewes food banks
- Charity collections, not least for The Brain Tumour Charity in memory of Dave Evans
- Regular quiz nights, courtesy of Nick Geall
- Organise coach transport to away games for supporters
- Meet with other Lewes/Lewes FC community groups
- Drink tea – we are world leaders in this regard
What next for the Supporters Club?
Without wishing to blow our own bugle, we cover an awful lot of ground and make a very decent chunk of money for a relatively small band of volunteers. But we want to do more. Much more.
This year we’ve invested in the website so that we can start to build an online museum that captures the club’s history. If you’re interested in getting involved with that project, please get in touch.
We’d love to run more social events, but we need more volunteers to help us organise them. Again, if you’ve got a few hours spare to help us put on an event, we’d be grateful to hear from you.
We also want to increase our representation of the fan base, particularly amongst female supporters. We’ll do a better job of promoting our meetings in 2024, and we’d love to see as many people as possible at them. They’re largely informal events, so if you want to spend an evening chatting about the club with fellow supporters, then please feel free to join us. Sign up to become a member to find out about our forthcoming meetings.