Claire Hammond explains desire to become FOH board member

Why are you looking for election onto the Foundation board?

I guess it's not what I saw myself doing when I got the call from Gary Halliday about a year ago saying, 'I wondered if you'd be interested in volunteering on the marketing team for the Foundation, it's one meeting a month and it's really good fun'. I thought that sounded like something different and I'll get involved and one meeting a month doesn't seem like a lot of time and obviously that was a huge lie. It's been a busy, busy time and it's taken up a lot more of my time than I expected but I've thoroughly enjoyed it. I've got it back tenfold really in terms of the sort of satisfaction of being involved.

As we've come closer to sort of election time and a couple of people asked if I was thinking about standing and my initial response was no, not for me.You know, I'm quite happy just being in the background and going under the radar but actually the more I've got involved I guess the more I can see what I could be doing if I can give it a bit more of my time: if I can do the marketing team but also be involved at board level. I feel as if you've got more chance to influence the strategy side of things and I think it's a pivotal moment coming up for the board and the Foundation in terms of what might happen next with Hearts, on the pitch, off the pitch, where do we go next as the Foundation? As a membership we have achieved something absolutely incredible and it's, what do you do next so can we keep growing that? Can we find reasons to engage with people who've never felt the need to join? And if not, why not, what can we do differently? What would you join for? Can we keep this going, can we build on it and can we have more of an influence really?

Everything that the members raise goes directly to the club so it's win-win really but I think there's more chance to help directly where that goes if you're at board level and in terms of growing relationships for the Foundation with our members but also with Hearts itself, with Big Hearts, with supporters groups.

It tends to be something I end up doing without really meaning to. I talk quite a lot so I end up sort of bringing people together quite a lot in my day job but in my life in general I'm sort of a people person so I enjoy that side of it as well and I would enjoy building relationships to strengthen the Foundation as well.

What have you learned from your experience as a volunteer that you think can bring to the board or qualities that you think will help at board level?

What I've realised is that nothing's as simple as I thought it might be, everything's more complicated. Some of it's quite frustrating so you might come up with an idea but there's very many steps towards getting that idea anywhere near launched. There's a lot of things that we just can't do that from the other side as just a fan and a member. I would always think, you know, we should be doing this and we should be doing that but it's not always possible and it's not always possible in the way you'd like to do it. And one of the things I've learned over the last year is that I don't think we should let the perfect be the enemy of the good so we've kind of sat on ideas because we've been blocked by something or there's been a timescale issue where we had to wait on something being delivered first and we've held back and then something else has happened. And actually it would have been better just to communicate and to get things moving and to get things out there and to find a way to do that in a way that's acceptable and of a high standard, but not to necessarily wait until everything's perfect.

I had my plot ceremony a few years ago now but I've been volunteering at things like the plot ceremonies and to watch other people have their day getting their plot ceremony from the Foundation just reinforces and reminds me why I'm so proud of it.

I think the marketing side I've got a good understanding of some of the challenges but also the drive that's there in the marketing team is brilliant. There's some really good people and we're all working on different initiatives to help grow the Foundation so it's a positive space.

You mentioned the fact that it's quite a pivotal time for the club and the Foundation​. What do you see as the purpose of the Foundation going forward and some of the key challenges on that?

We hand over a significant amount of our members' money every month to the club and the club need it. So it's not that that's spare money, so building upon that is going to help us do more so any money that comes in the door can be used by the club and go towards wherever they need to direct it. So it can be infrastructure projects, training facilities, player budgets, all of that. That's where I think the purpose remains is to help strengthen the club.

Hearts fans are brilliant, we put our hands in our pockets so often and that's without the Foundation: games, kits, various social events that we all go to we're brilliant, we really are. And in the Foundation people have stepped up yet again and I just feel as though there's a lot of people who've never joined and that's fine. And to be honest I also think not everybody can afford it but there's a kind of segment of people who can afford it but just don't see the value. That's our job is to persuade them that, first of all, the money that comes in is going to be well spent.

I think lots of people put money into the Foundation and they don't expect anything back for that they put it in, they know it's going to the club and that's enough for them. It's personally my favourite direct debit if you can say such a thing. I've never felt I need anything back but we should offer something back and part of that is about maybe exclusive events that people can come to just engage more: letting them have a bit more input into what we're doing, what we're doing next, what we can offer them back as fans and members. Just so that there's a reason to be part of the Foundation of Hearts.

It's widely accepted that the two areas that everyone seems to agree on, whether you are a current pledger or you are a former pledger you've never pledged, is around communication and engagement. How do you think you can change that and how would you go about changing that?

We need to be more accessible. I know that people can send us a tweet or they can send us an email but in our day-to-day lives the people who are involved in the Foundation should be known. I've got season tickets so if somebody standing next to me wants to give me an idea for the Foundation of Hearts I would be delighted. Equally if somebody wants to approach any one of us and say this has been awful, I've been trying to get help with this and nobody's replying, then we need to be able to accept that and take it on board. I think creating spaces for those kind of conversations to happen in real life is equally as important as having a website having social media.

One of the ideas I've talked a little bit about is Trusted Voices in my election document and the Trusted Voices part of that I'm hoping to create social events. Some of these will be ones where you come along and it's like a question-and-answer session and you get to listen to some of the the legends and players. But another side of that might well be a night in the 1874 regularly, maybe once a month where there's people there from the Foundation who you can speak to. If you've got an issue you can sort that, if you want to suggest anything at all or give feedback then you can do that. I'm hoping that some of the Trusted Voices will pop in and you'll just have a chance to have a bit of a just a space to talk about Foundation of Hearts.

How do you think the Foundation can change that perception that with their pledge and with being an owner that they do feel like they are an owner, that their voice and their money is making a difference or matters?

Within the marketing group just now there are various initiatives being developed to allow fans to feed in their thoughts and feelings in a much more deliberate way so that we can garner that feeling amongst fans. We can discuss it at our board but then also there's two reps on the club board. If I was in the position of being on the Foundation of Hearts board, I'm quite active on social media and I feel as though I've always got quite a good feeling for how fans are feeling in general, albeit we never all feel the same. If I was on the Foundation board I'm not somebody who could just sit by and not discuss that. So I would be bringing that to the board and then I would be pushing for the reps on our board to take that to the club. Obviously the club don't have to do what we say because as a fans movement, we don't run the club, but our views definitely as fans and owners should be heard and taken into account. That's the most we can really ask for. We won't always know all of the reasons behind footballing decisions or operational decisions within the club, but I think if we're able to feed into those decisions then that's really important.

Because of your experience being part of the Foundation as a volunteer, how easy do you think it will be to fix the communication in the short term?

I don't think it will be easy to fix. It will take a concerted effort and I think it will take a while. Tthere are some immediate improvements that can be made for sure. We're all volunteers there's nobody paid to work for the Foundation and rightly so but it means that we're all kind of working around day jobs, family commitments, just life really. But I think we're getting to a point within the marketing group where we're much more structured we're starting to build proper timetable of events across years, so that we know what's happening next and the communication needs to just follow. It needs to step up.

As a fan and a member myself you know that the communication is inconsistent, there's no point in denying that. That would be one of the first ways that we need to improve in terms of social media, emails going out, people contacting us and us getting back to them as quickly as we possibly can to resolve any issues. But also with the idea of engaging fans in more face-to-face opportunities so they can come and speak to us, because not everybody wants to send an email or go onto social media. Some people just want to be heard and it's important that we can do that, otherwise it does feel like you pay your money but there's no real relationship there. We want people to feel heard and up to date on everything that's going on.

There'd be nothing to stop us giving a really comprehensive update around what we've been involved in, what the marketing team's doing, what the board's doing. There'll be confidential things but just in general more information about what everybody's doing because if you don't hear you imagine that nothing's being done and it's not the case at all. We need to be better at communicating that.

You mentioned the volunteers. What is your view on a full-time member of staff for the Foundation?

It's an interesting idea. I think there may come a point where it's needed but I'm not even sure if that's something that might go to a vote, to be honest, because it's members' money at the end of the day and it would be a significant amount. You'd need to know that it was going to pay for itself almost. So if that person was coming in to actually drive membership or some of the duties, they would take on would drive membership and you could kind of negate the cost, then I guess that's one thing. At the moment there are a lot of really dedicated volunteers, so I feel as though we can probably manage. But, yeah, it's a very interesting idea, I don't know what the official line on that would be.

What's the most important thing for you if elected and for the Foundation and your role within the Foundation?

For me, it would be about engagement: making people feel rewarded for being part of the Foundation. We love Hearts and we had a really strong reason to step up years ago. But why do you give the money now... and actually to feel as though you get something back, just even in the way of the communication would be an easy win for us to improve but more. So actually being involved in a community where you can go along you can see other people who've paid in: you might be at an event that you can only attend because you're a Foundation of Hearts member. And that's not to exclude anyone, it's just really to reward people who have paid in money and supported the Foundation. Between that and hopefully being a bit more agile as an organisation, looking at ways to circumvent challenges and issues so we can respond and we can move quicker.