OASF Goals and Outcomes 2024/25

Reflecting on the year

In any organisation, it is essential to reflect on our initial goals and compare them to what we achieved. This helps us understand our progress & provides valuable insights for future planning.

Our Goals and Outcomes

We talked through our goals and the outcomes from them at our annual meeting this evening. We will be sharing a recording of the meeting where we went into more detail.

Goals	Outcomes
Identify an infrastructure project to tap into OASF funding and share issue options. July ‘24 Follow-up: September ’24, December ‘24	Various ideas have been put forward. These include funding to improve catering kiosks, a minibus for the academy and a fan park with community uses on non-matchdays. We need something both OASF and OAFC can agree on before we start campaigning for donations. We also identified that the project would require a community use in order to be funded by community share issue.
Address fan concerns around service times in the Fan Bar. Raised: July ’24, August ’24, March ‘25	The club took on board fan concerns which were put forward by OASF and the Fan Bar has been upgraded, with plans for further improvement in the future.
Address fan concerns around food/drink pricing & availability. Raised: July ‘24 Follow-up: August ’24, September ’24, November ’24, February ‘25	Early discussions relating to this topic revealed that the club were in negotiation with a large catering provider and the pricing and availability issues were the result of an interim agreement being in place. The club took on fan feedback and a different provider was identified in November and negotiations began with them.
Address fan concerns around Boundary Park becoming a cashless environment. Raised: July ‘24	Concerns relating to network outages were alleviated with the confirmation that terminals within Boundary Park would store transaction then process them when the network became available. Fans who preferred to purchase their tickets using cash have been given the option to use the club shop/ticket office.
Implement a campaign to tackle to use of drugs within football stadiums. Raised: July ‘24	OASF were unable to find a supporter-led anti-drug campaign and the club put us in touch with their police liaison officer.
Create a campaign to gift football boots to children who cannot afford them. Raised: July ‘24	The “Bootbank” campaign, as it was eventually labelled, was a big success. Over 200 pairs of new and refurbished boots were donated. Some were given to local children and 15 pairs were donated to Vimal Yoganathan’s similar campaign for children in Sri Lanka.
Address fan concerns around implementation of the National League Cup (a new cup competition involving PL youth teams). Raised: August ‘24	OASF conducted a survey of almost 500 fans and the response was overwhelmingly negative. With the results of the survey in mind, the concept of the cup was robustly challenged by OASF and the stance of the club was explained in response. The PL covered the costs of matches and they therefore generated extra income. In addition to this, the cup was seen as the opportunity to give game time to under-utilised players.
Redevelop the PlayerShare offer to include a return for the fund’s coffers. Raised: August ‘24	A draft proposal was developed in which a % of any future sale of a PlayerShare player went back into the fund.
Create and distribute activity sheets for children attending matches at BP. Raised: August ‘24	Activity sheets are now regularly distributed for children to complete on matchdays.
Address fan concerns around steward treatment of fans in the Rochdale Road End. Raised: August ‘24	The club took action to improve the situation between fans and stewards and actively monitored and addressed the number of complaints being received.
Appoint a new OASF Director to the club’s board. Raised: September ‘24 Follow-up: November ’24, December ’24, January ’25, February ‘25	OASF issued a survey to determine how fans would like the appointment to work. We needed to consider the challenges of the past, such as the conflicting loyalties of being on 2 boards and not being able to share information with the rest of the OASF board, which immediately puts the appointed Director in a difficult position. The club acknowledged that the previous setup put the OASF Director in a difficult position and agreed to review our draft terms of reference. We were then invited to discuss this at a club board meeting. We are still working through a few points with the Club. We agreed that in the interim, different OASF Directors would attend OAFC board meetings throughout the year, with some board-to-board meetings. The club also agreed access to relevant financial information as detailed in OASF’s proposal.
Expand the Season Ticket Support scheme to include half-season tickets. Raised: November ‘24	15 half-season tickets were distributed to fans in need, we’re on target to deliver more full season tickets than ever this season.
Put on an OASF event to raise some funds (became “Ask the Ref” event). Raised: December ‘24	The event was organised and tickets put on sale. We requested that the club advertise the event to help generate interest, but the advert wasn’t published. The event was ultimately cancelled due to lack of interest.
OASF to have input on ticket prices for the upcoming season. Raised: January ‘25	We asked to be included proactively in discussions about next season’s ticket prices. OASF suggested an inflation-linked increase (3%) to adult and over-65 season tickets while bringing prices for juniors down and introducing a student price bracket. The club initially modelled for a 10% increase, brought down to 5% after review of our proposal.
Carry out a survey of the current ticketing software used by OAFC and assess the market for alternative options. Raised: May 2025	Following multiple complaints from fans, we issued a survey to determine the key issues with the Future Ticketing platform. We followed this up with a detailed proposal, supported by a ticketing expert and the OADID group.
Campaign for the capacity restriction to be lifted for the playoff final at Wembley. Raised: May 2025	We contacted local MPs, the FSA and worked with the Shrimpers Trust to pressure TfL and the Wembley SAG group to lift the restriction on capacity at Wembley for the playoff final. Pressure paid off and the restriction was lifted. Many others played a part in this campaign, and we aren’t claiming it as a victory for OASF.
Help fans get to Wembley who otherwise couldn’t afford the trip. Raised: May 2025	We raised funds from the OAFC fanbase to get as many fans as possible to Wembley to share in the biggest occasion the club has seen in decades. We were able to help 25 people get to the game and were also able to provide tickets in some cases.
Pushed for the early bird season ticket and pay-in-3 period to be extended beyond the playoff final. Raised: May 2025	We were unable to persuade the club to extend the early bird period, but the pay-in-3 option was extended to help supporters who had paid out for the playoff final.