James Sloggie on why he is standing for FOH board elections

What made you decide to want to make the step from being a volunteer to being on the board?

I got involved with the Foundation as a volunteer two years ago. Through that time I've done a lot of things, worked in a lot of different departments across Tynecastle, but probably more importantly worked closely with the Foundation and with the fans as part of that. I think it's given me a real opportunity to understand the Foundation from the inside, to hear a lot of what the fans and what our members have to say and what they feed back and to really identify the challenges that the Foundation have going forward.

I look at where the Foundation is now and I think we still hang our hat on saving the club. While we need to remember history and that's really important, I think now is the time that the Foundation need to have a little bit of a reset, a little bit of a refocus on what we want to achieve and where we want to go and what we want to do. I feel that my skills from 20 years working in professional sport and my experience with the Foundation lend my hand well to taking that role on and driving fan ownership forward. 

What have you learned from your experience as a volunteer with the Foundation so far that you can bring to the board?

I think the big thing is that our fans are incredibly passionate, and that's true whether they're Foundation members or not. I think they can bring an awful lot to the Foundation and help that grow and go forward. I suppose over the last six months or so, I've been out talking to fan groups across Scotland and further afield and the overriding message is, give us a voice. We want to be heard and we want to feel like we're heard. In my address, I've mentioned three initiatives that I would like to get up and running fairly quickly. I think they would allow myself to further build that interaction and really give the fans a voice across that.

We've got other areas, onboarding young people comes up fairly frequently, in terms of the opportunities for folk to sign their children up. But the overruling thing is, we want to be heard and we want you to tell us what's going on. I think those platforms that I've discussed in the address would really start to bring those things together. 

You have spoken about the Foundation needing a reset? Can you expand on that and explain what that would mean and what that would potentially look like?

We talk about fan ownership, and while I'm not going to get down the route of fans making decisions, I do think that we need to bring that sort of further in. I think that needs to be a big focus. We've touched briefly on the kind of junior pledge and bringing more of a youth voice to the Foundation. It's about reaching out and establishing what the younger generation want, what they want their club to look like and how we drive it forward in the future.

We need to change that narrative so your membership to the Foundation is now about growing the club. It's about taking it forward, it's about making it stronger, it's about strengthening training facilities, strengthening the product on the pitch and all these things.

That reset is really focusing on what fan ownership is, looking at those younger generations, giving them a voice, looking at the generation that we are. I was mid-20s, when the Foundation all started, there was a really strong message of, you need to be part of this or this doesn't exist. Now we have to reset that message and go, your parents, your guardian saved the club, what do you want from it now? I think that's the really important message for me and what the Foundation needs to drill into is, what does the future look like? Where does the Foundation go next? And what do the fans and members want from that?

Communication has probably been inconsistent at best. You have first-hand experience of that on the marketing team, how can it be fixed?

First of all to address the communications. I think the Foundation's reach, if you like, has improved massively over the last two years. So if we take Twitter or X as an example, two years ago average daily hits was about 1,000 hits coming through on that social media. As we reported at the AGM last year, that has increased to about 10,000. As we're coming into AGM time at the moment, we're getting ready to pull those figures and we would expect to be seeing an increase of around another 4,000 to 5,000 on our average hits per day.

Now I think where the challenge is that while we've grown these things, and we're reaching out and we're running a lot on social media, the information that we're putting out there isn't the information that the fans or the members want or expect to hear. I think as a fan first, I absolutely understand where that's coming from.

I think in terms of the Foundation, we've got a really good group of volunteers who are the marketing group. I think that does an injustice as to what that volunteer group does because they really cover so many aspects of the Foundation. What we rely on is that information coming from the board. I think at the moment there is a little bit of a slowing down of that communication coming from the board into the marketing group for us to then be able to communicate that. Football moves so fast, that information has to be instant coming through or it's out of date before we can do anything with it.

On Jambos Kickback it's been referenced the Dons Society that are involved with Wimbledon that post every minute from every single meeting that they have. While that poses challenges, it has two really big positives. One, it's really transparent as to what the board's talking about and that they're representing the fans. And, two, it holds directors to account for what they're promising to do or take forward. I really want to start as kind of an immediate process. My intention would be to stay part of that marketing group and be involved in that as well. Sitting on the boards, I would have that information first hand. We can go through it, we can say, this can go out, that can't go out, this can't go out, and we can have that out to our fans and members pretty much instantly.

I would also like to see reporting on what is going on at board level. What's being discussed and that shared with the fans as well. The challenge is always that we're pushing towards 9,000 members. If we put out an email to 9,000 members, that isn't going to stay private. So we have to be smart on what information is going out, but I genuinely believe and I stand by that there is a lot of information that could be going out there. It's just bridging that gap, getting it moving a little bit quicker and getting it out there almost in real time in terms of what's going on.

I think that all sounds good and that's all something I think that fans would be very much appreciative of but what are the challenges doing that and how realistic is it?

For me, it should actually be an agenda item of the monthly meeting. What can go out to the fans instantly? What can go out now? What can we share? That would be an agenda item at the end of the meeting. What can we put out now? What's interesting? What's exciting? The Foundation board agrees on it, the club agrees on it and it goes out. It's a case of pulling, whether it's a social media graphic or how that looks, and getting it out there. If we're looking at going down the minutes route, it's not an instant process because what can go out from there has to be considered. But it's about taking those minutes the day after, working through those, what can go out, what can't, agreeing that with the club again and sharing it out.

I suppose the advantage I have in that process is that I already have really close contacts with the communications team at Hearts, and with the people that sit as part of that meeting. In terms of getting that process done, it's not a case of getting feet under the table and establishing that. I'm already in communication with those people and can figure out between the Foundation and the club how that best works and how it looks.

How would you go about changing the perception that the Foundation doesn't have an influence on decisions at the club?

I spoke about two things in my address. One of them was a fans forum and one of them was a fans hub. I guess they're two similar things but work in opposite directions. First of all, in terms of the fans forum, I'd be looking at having a large pool of fans across... I've been saying across the country, but in a digital world, they can be across the world. Though it would be an application process, it'd be a non-disclosure situation. The Foundation would be able to use that group to be able to go out and ask questions about specific ideas or initiatives. Or if there are strong messages coming through social media, we can go out and ask, what is your opinion on this? How do you feel about it? What do you think the view of the fans are? That gives us a really broad picture of what the fans are thinking before we could then potentially go out to fan consultation on these things.

The other one, which is more about the fans coming to us, is the fan hubs. In a similar situation, we'd be looking for representatives across, if you take Scotland for an example, maybe a north, south, east and west representative for the Foundation. These people would have a Foundation email address, they would have access to relevant information and people within those regions could contact their representative within that area. A little bit like the development structures that the SFA might have where they've got regional development managers, they'd be able to come into those hubs, ask the questions and either get a response or that information would then be relayed to the board. Those individuals within those hubs would then send in the questions that were coming throughout that system and we would then be able to go back to the fans and answer those.

Now, I suppose answering your question in terms of representation from the Foundation and the club, we would be in a position to answer those questions from both sides. I think just by giving fans an opportunity, one, to field those, but also to get timely responses from those with detail from both parties, I think it would be a huge benefit to everyone.

Having been part of the Foundation now as a volunteer what would your view be on a full-time member of staff?

I think it's a really good question. As with a lot of these things, I don't think there is an easy answer. From my experience in sport, and having been involved in recruitment for similar roles within governing bodies, I think there's a lot of advantages and I think there's a lot of challenges. The biggest challenge is that you have to employ that person properly. So there has to be somebody to manage them, they have to have line management, there are expenses associated with it, and that can all become quite challenging.

Obviously the huge advantage is that there is somebody on the ground that can help to spread the word, but can also problem-solve live and is there to be that real representative for the club. Where the Foundation is at the moment, it's maybe not quite the right time for that. I don't think the Foundation is in a place where that could be managed and really driven forward. The team of volunteers that they have are exceptional and the hours that they put in are really important. But I do think once the Foundation establishes what's next and where it wants to go, that's something that genuinely has to be looked at and has to be considered. In terms of growing the reach the Foundation has, the impact that they can have on the club and the support that they can provide our members.

What's important to you for the Foundation in the future?

I don't want to sound like a broken record or like everyone else, but the biggest thing for me is that the Foundation does genuinely represent the fans, and that the fans really have a voice in that. I've said a few times that I am a fan first and foremost and I want to see the Foundation grow. There's been figures thrown about that we want to reach 15,000 members and things like that. While I don't know if that's realistic, I really would like to see us pushing towards that number. I think if we consider the number of season ticket holders at Tynecastle, compared to the almost 9,000 members we've got there, there is a lot of work to do to grow that.

I would like to be in a position where every fan was a Foundation member, it was part of your season ticket, it was part of the DNA of being the club. For that, there has to be something to hang on to. It has to be something about growing for the future, it has to be about supporting the club. Part of that is about giving the fans that voice, that transparency: where does your money go every month? Giving them the choice on where that money goes. It's genuinely about the Foundation being closer to the club and closer to the fans, and really growing that link to be a voice as owners, I suppose.