No 1. Bulletin from the East End Park Boardroom

12/10/11: The board have published the first of their quarterly bulletins.

DAFC, Season 2011/12

No 1. Bulletin from the East End Park Boardroom

In this new initiative DAFC Board members would like to let all fans know of our short, and longer, term aspirations and operations.

We plan to update our fans on both our dreams and challenges, on a quarterly basis, and our bulletin should be viewed with the long term plans in mind but also the reality of the current year's objective of remaining in the SPL at the end of the season.

Our vision for the long term is to have a financially strong club regularly in the top half of the SPL with a well-developed Youth Programme delivering a stream of players each year to the first team pool. The facilities at East End Park will be continually developed to establish the most attractive facilities of any provincial Scottish Club with the commercial activities providing meaningful contributions to the club each year. Currently 50% of the Club's income already has to come from our commercial operations (advertising, sponsorships, retail and our conferencing and banqueting operation) Every party held here and Matchday hospitality place taken really does help our 1st team efforts!

The training centre at Pitreavie will also be progressively developed as an open, community use Centre of Fitness for multiple sports for all ages and genders. We are strenuously seeking public and private funding to build a new, full size synthetic turf pitch at Pitreavie, and would love Pitreavie to become the centre for a strong DAFC Community Programme bringing toddlers, youngsters and their families into the Pars Community. We already reach 700+ local children every week through our delivery of fun, all skills community programmes.

We are rapidly finding however that even in the SPL the current economic climate is proving to be a challenging environment. The stark reality is that the Club's income is well below budget as a result of: A) lower attendances than anticipated...less than 3000 DAFC fans at the Rangers game for example.. B) early exit from the Scottish Communities League Cup C) Season Tickets sales 500 below forecast and D) Higher costs.

For example the switch of our first home game to a Monday evening reduced our attendance and effectively cost some £30,000. Similarly the 2 early kick offs for the televised games damaged the attendances and also the commercial income. Costs have also been hit by the increased requirements of the SPL. For example the Under 19 squad which is a mandatory requirement, will cost DAFC over £60,000 this year. Increasing electricity costs for the stadium come in at over £6,000 per month, and Police and stewarding costs will be over £100,000 this season.

It has been a fairly unpleasant financial baptism but the reality is that the Club is well behind what we originally thought to be very conservative budgets for 11/12.

There is no point however complaining about early starts, television or other external factors. We have to re-organise ourselves and how we go about things.

Our action plan:
.
To increase our income:

A) Plans are in hand to launch our 2011 Pars Executive Sponsorship package to up to 50 Companies and individuals. This is a very unique sponsorship package with lots of annual benefits and full details will be announced shortly.

B) Hold a Sponsored Walk at East End Park (mid/late-November) - We would encourage all fans to join DAFC Youth Teams, DAFC U19's, DAFC First Team and coaches, Managers and as many fans as possible to walk and talk to the team. This will be a fun day out at East End Park with refreshments available. All monies raised will go towards DAFC's Youth Development squads and U19's.

C) Parties, Private Dinners, Meetings, Matchday Hospitality and Festive Party Lunches & Nights; East End Events have great offers and prices for all events; we have had to increase East End Events original income targets for 11/12 by over £40,000 to try and partly compensate for lower matchday crowd attendances, so every party held here really does help DAFC!

D) Re-launch the Pars Lottery - There is a big programme coming up to re-launch the lottery system and build up the membership numbers. This used to contribute in excess of £50,000 annually to DAFC but membership numbers have fallen dramatically in recent years.

Reducing our costs:

A) Everything is under the microscope, as we must bring costs down by at least £100,000 by the end of the season!

Our Way Forward:

The budgets are being revised but the major challenge is how do we increase the average crowd attendance?

We simply can't support a SPL infrastructure with an average attendance of 4,500. We need 6 or 7,000, which we exceeded for our last 2 games of last season against Raith Rovers and Falkirk. How do we bring them back? A 1000 shortage in per match attendance from anticipated crowd numbers results over the season in a cash loss of £320,000. A 1,500 shortage which results in a cash sway of £480,000. This is where we are now.

The Youth Programme is going from strength to strength under the guidance of Stephen Wright and one of our Director's Craig McWhirter.

Dunfermline Academy of Sport at Pitreavie will be going through major changes in the near future with the 4 x 5-a-side pitches being re-surfaced shortly and plans for a full size artificial pitch are being drawn up in conjunction with Fife Council and Sports Scotland, hopefully for delivery by mid 2012.

Your ideas!

The Board welcome all meaningful ideas to generate income! Your ideas will be discussed at our next Board Meeting, please just drop us an email with your thoughts to enquiries@ dafc.co.uk, or write directly to The Board of Directors, East End Park.


With our thanks and kind regards,


DAFC Board