PabloEFC

Hello all, I'm a member of the Everton Fan Advisory Board and I've been made aware of this thread that mentions us, so I just thought I'd pop in and explain a few bits about the way we work (and the way we don't!). We were planning to get in touch with all 3 promoted teams this summer anyway, to welcome them to the Premier League and to offer any assistance they might need in formulating their FAB as we went through that process 2 years ago (after 18 months of discussion and planning) so we're happy to help and answer any questions about the challenges we faced and how we have evolved. I'll include a few relevant links to our website where relevant for some further reading. Before that though, after reading this thread, I think there's one thing that's important to emphasise - there is absolutely no requirement for a FAB to have even a single club employee as a member. This is something that we collectively feel very strongly about, and to be perfectly honest, we can't understand how a Fan Advisory Board can consist of anything but fans. We need to be able to speak openly about the club in our meetings in order to hold the club to account and we don't see how this would be possible with an employee of the club sitting there. However, as we have reached out to other FABs in the Premier League throughout the season - often via our pre-match DropIn Sessions - we are finding that more and more have either been talked into having club employees on their FAB, been told that they must have club employees on their FAB, in some cases have had it completely taken out of their hands and the club has literally hand-picked and announced who is on their FAB without any input from fans, whilst others are still fighting their corner as they don't want to have club employees on their FAB, but the clubs are insisting on it. We're keen to let other fan groups know that there is another way. So...the Everton FAB is made up of 11 Everton fans (all of whom are fan-elected in some way) and no club employees. Meetings-wise, the "headlines" are that we meet monthly as a FAB and we have mandated quarterly meetings with the club (i.e. the senior management team, including at least one board member, and the CEO must be present for 2 of the 4 meetings). However, the reality is that the FAB members are talking to each other and working on various projects on a daily basis, and we're also in regular contact with various club employees, and we hold ad-hoc meetings with them as and when necessary (i.e. outside of the mandated quarterly meetings). We also have several sub-committees within the FAB (e.g. Comms, Business & Technology, Everton Women) who have their own meetings and ongoing projects. Minutes of our FAB meetings and summaries of our meetings with the club are on our website. The make-up of our 11 FAB positions is that 6 spaces are "reserved" for representatives of other fan groups (e.g. the Fans Forum, Disabled Supporters Association, Heritage Society, Supporters Clubs, etc.) - these members are are nominated via their own organisations to represent them on the FAB. We also hold an election each year where all Evertonians that are registered with the club can vote to fill the remaining positions - one is a reserved position for an FSA representative, alongside 4 other "unreserved" places with other requirements such as protected characteristics, a shareholder, etc. The decision was made to "stagger" the terms of the unreserved places to be either one or three seasons so we can ensure some continuity whilst also keeping the FAB fresh. Full details are available on our website and the election process is currently ongoing for the 2024/25 season with two places up for grabs this year. Those are the basics (although that was a LOT of waffle - apologies!) but there is a lot more information on our website and our Twitter/X and social media accounts, so feel free to have a look and I hope that this was of some use to you all in explaining how FABs can work independently so that you are fully informed whilst forming your own FAB.