Paul Butler is a lifelong Heart of Midlothian fan and a Foundation pledger from the beginning. You can read Paul's election address HERE.
Why are you looking to become a Foundation board member?
We saved the club and they then became the majority shareholder. So the purpose has been achieved and since then I think the Foundation of Hearts has lost its way a bit – and I don't think it's clear to anybody why we give our money or what happens with that. The communication has been really poor. I stood at the AGM two years ago and I expressed the fact that the communication from the board was really poor and actually most of the directors could walk past every fan or pledger in the street and no one would know who they are. The only people who really had any visibility back then were the departing Stuart Wallace and Louise Strutt. No one else really had any visibility and I put that to Gerry [Mallon] at the time. [He said] 'Yep, it's all going to improve'. I spoke about purpose, what are we here for, etc, etc and in those two years – I couldn't make the AGM last year – nothing has changed.
I've worked in the financial sector, worked in operations with customers and then laterally I've been working on projects and part of all of that is to actually get things happening. I'm coming in looking at this going: right, what is the plan, what's the purpose, let's get that out there and actually start working towards achieving all the things that you say you're going to do. Last year we got told we're going to go for 15,000 pledgers, that's a fantastic goal. What's the plan? There is no plan.
I feel I've got skills that would allow us to repurpose the Foundation of Hearts because we're no longer a club of crisis. The reason has changed for why we want to put money into the Foundation of Hearts. What is that? What are the new goals? And then get out there and communicate it. Bring the pledgers and non-pledgers on that journey with you because they're not engaged. If you ask them what is the purpose of the Foundation of Hearts, I think very few would be able to tell you. If you ask what the goals are, people probably wouldn't know what the goals are. People have no idea, so they need to be communicated and they need to be brought on that journey.
What do you think the purpose needs to be for the Foundation and its goals?
That's probably something that should possibly come from the pledgers and not just from the board. I give my pledge because it's supporting the club. It's giving the club a start against our rivals. So if we put in £1.4 million, the club are £1.4m ahead financially against everyone else and that can allow the club to do something with that, whatever that may be. It gives the club a stronger start.
What I think the purpose is or why I give might be different to the next person. So there has to be a collective of what is that purpose now. And it has to be something that hooks people. Let's ask the pledgers, what do you think our purpose is? What do you want the purpose to be?
There's two real clear goals for me just now that have to be worked on. One is communication. You see from every single candidate, everyone has said the same thing about communication. The communication really has been poor and it's been poor for a while. It's not consistent. It has no meaning behind it. It doesn't link into whatever the strategy is, as far as I'm concerned. We retweet things from the club. We occasionally do a man of the match when we win and then don't do a man of the match when we lose. Even when you get the very infrequent update from the chairman, it's boring. It's an email. It's drab. It's not engaging at all. It doesn't tell you anything, really. There's nothing exciting.
On the communication front, it's almost having a timetable of stuff going on that is meaningful and has a purpose and is behind trying to achieve your goals. As well as engaging and educating on what the Foundation is about and why we're here and what we do for the club, our club.
My expertise isn't in communication or social media. But one of the things I would be doing with that is, if we don't have the skill set on the board, I'd be going out to the pledgers and looking for volunteers who have got the skill set. That is something else that was promised by the chair, was to go out and look for volunteers for different skill sets. It's never happened.
Only once has there been a situation where the Foundation of Hearts have gone out for volunteers. And that's when Louise Strutt was looking for people to come to a workshop about the family pledge. There were several different workshops. That's the only time that there's been an active approach to people saying, we need to speak to you, we want to get your views on stuff. That's the only time that's happened. I would be very much going out and saying, can you help us? Whether it be social media, content, website, whatever it is.
Going back to engaging with the pledgers, when they see other people have opportunities to help the Foundation they can then talk about what we're doing, this is what we're working on. They can spread that. Right now, we don't do that. How many podcasts have we got? How many times does someone go on? Probably once in a blue moon to talk about, well, we're having a Foundation of Hearts day, or we're going to do an event, but they don't come on on a regular basis. Different board members go on a regular basis so they get their name out there.
Then you've got the social media aspect of it, it's all too inconsistent. It's all bitty. It needs to be much more coherent. There needs to be regular updates going out that are meaningful on the communication front. That's imperative because if we're not going to communicate properly and with purpose, you're not going to achieve your goals.
The other thing which I think is pertinent is the number of pledgers. It's sat at just over 8,000 now for quite a number of years, but it's ageing. There has been no real engagement with the younger people, with kids. That workshop I was telling you that Louise had done, I was at that, they had the Gorgie Ultras in, they had kids in, they had parents in, you know, so it was covering every demographic about what is important to them about whatever is going on. I think that's going to be launching soon. That is going to be really key to then starting to look at different age groups. Hopefully this will start to help because it then becomes more of a family thing, like it can be with your season tickets.
The numbers need to increase. But that needs engagement and that needs the purpose. Can we go up to £9,000? Can we go up to £10,000? We don't know, but you've got to try something, you've got to try. It'd be going out and looking for people who can help and can we drive it? If we stay plateaued at 8,000 and it's ageing, that number will dwindle.
How do you entice people to pledge to the Foundation?
It's being able to educate the pledgers and the non-pledgers. Saying, if you put £10 a month in or whatever and we give the club X, this is what it's allowed the club to do. I don't think we do that right now. We take the money and it goes to the club. I've no idea what it means. They've not long reseeded the Oriam pitch. Now, for all we know, that money could have facilitated that and allowed that to happen. Had they not had that money, that may not be the case. It's being able to educate the fans on this is what it does, this is what it's allowing the club to do, it facilitates. This is where the club have to help because they have to turn around and say this is what this has allowed us to do. So it is meaningful and it is something that is tangible, you can tangibly show something that your money, your pledge is actually doing for the club. Right now, we don't do that. It's being able to work with the club to say, thanks to the Foundation of Hearts, this is what it's allowing us to do. I don't think we've done enough of that.
The perception from fans is that the Foundation doesn't have a strong influence at the club. Do you agree with that and how can that be changed?
Perception is reality. I think the comments that were made the other week by Andrew McKinlay about the privileged position really doesn't help strengthen that relationship. Now he's come out and said that's not what he meant. But that relationship for me has to become stronger. We have to work together. On the outside looking in, it doesn't appear that we're working together. I'm not quite sure the club are helping the Foundation of Hearts get stronger and bigger. Yet the money keeps going into the bank account. So that relationship has to improve. That is the perception and everyone, certainly out of my group, thinks the same.
As soon as the performances are poor, the first thing fans do, Foundation of Hearts, what are you doing about it? I'm cancelling my pledge. You see it on social media all the time. That continues to happen. We don't share and educate what goes on. Understandably, you can't talk about everything that goes on within board meetings but we have to try and be a bit more transparent about what goes on and what's said. If something isn't going right, I don't necessarily think it's wrong that the Foundation of Hearts can't comment on it. This goes back to if you're communicating on a regular basis, I don't think there's any harm in talking about performances. If they're going great, brilliant, or if they're not, saying performances haven't been good enough. There has to be a bit more transparency about what's getting discussed at board level. How much of that is allowed, we don't know. Fans have to see that element of it because if they don't see any of that it fuels the frustration and people think Foundation is doing nothing, that they're just sitting there, just happily ticking along in the director's box, which I'm sure isn't the case.
Education and communication will help that. If the team's not doing well and losing games, the easiest thing for fans to do is cancel the pledge to make their kind of voice heard. I suppose it's trying to bring that around with what you're talking about in communication engagement, where if you're being more transparent, then people might be less likely to do that. You're safeguarding and protecting the Foundation in that way.
And that comes back to communication and engagement?
It comes back to what's happening with your money. What is it enabling the club to do and I think if people then realise my money does make a difference then that default of I'm going to cancel [my pledge] doesn't happen because you know there is a bigger picture. Let's educate and that stops that.
You've also got this other dynamic that's coming down the track, and I've seen quite a few comments when the Tony Bloom deal broke. People going, 'Oh, well, the club don't need my money, so I'm going to cancel my pledge'. There were quite a lot of those comments coming out saying, well, that's, that's our time up, right? That is a risk in itself. On that front, and again, with proper communication and why you give your money that would maybe stop that because it still allows the club to be in a powerful position if they at the club are getting X million a year.
What's important for you if elected to the Foundation?
What is the purpose? Then what are the goals? It's to create that plan on the back of that and then what skills do we need to see that plan through? It's giving regular updates on how we are progressing with the plans so people can see what's happening. You're sharing it so the fans are coming along, the pledgers and the non-pledgers are coming on that journey. If you're communicating that and we get our comms on point – being regular, consistent, meaningful – that for me is the next steps.
One of the things I would love to do with the board is something we do at work called a retrospective. I'd like them to go in and actually reflect back on the last year or so and go, 'OK, what's gone well, what's not gone well? How can we improve?' Because we're all volunteers, we've all got day jobs, but actually how can we get better at what we do? What hasn't gone well? The directors must have frustrations as well and have things that they would like to do better. That's one of the key things that I would love to do so that we can continue to improve and do that on a regular basis.
Read the rules here