Posted on 26th December 2019
February’s Football v Homophobia Month of Action kicks off today with the campaign asking fans, clubs, players and the football authorities to focus their efforts on challenging homophobia.
Join the FSA today…
If you’re reading this there’s a very good chance that you know about the Football Supporters’ Association’s campaigns which have brought about away price caps, new safe standing areas, secured 7,000 more FA Cup final tickets for fans, and supported trusts who wish to bring their club into fan ownership. These campaigns have helped hundreds of thousands of supporters.
But there’s a lot more to the FSA than campaigns, and that can sometimes be overlooked. So what are the other member benefits? (Psssst – you can join the FSA for free.)
One of our driving aims is to offer all services for free (which is definitely a benefit!) and the range of support covers both individual members and our affiliated / associated fans’ groups.
- Amanda Jacks (aka @FSA_Faircop) has helped hundreds of individual fans over the years who’ve needed it. Many of those justly avoided club bans and even criminal records thanks to the advice offered. We have close relationships with the best and most experienced solicitors in the country when it comes to football law.
- Our Free Lions team has been supporting England fans at tournaments across the planet since the 90s with the best info to make sure their trips are safe and smooth. FSA Cymru and the recently established Free Lionesses perform a similar function for the Wales men’s and England women’s teams.
- As well as promoting the general concept that football should be open to all the Fans For Diversity campaign has helped establish dozens of new supporters’ groups across the county and funded countless events and local campaigns which wouldn’t have happened without its support.
- Interested in setting up your own supporters’ group? Then we can help with that with model rules and constitutions for supporters’ trusts and independent supporters’ associations. Get in touch.
- Speaking of supporters’ trusts we can pay for a new trust’s rules to be registered while all groups are eligible for one on one support and free 30 minute legal advice from Gateleys.
- OK, this might not sound like the most exhilarating point but surveys can be a massively useful tool for our member supporter groups when it comes to gathering the views of fans at their club. We can host surveys for our affiliates and associates, help structure the questions in the most effective way, and use the survey as a recruitment tool for your organisation. And it’s another free service.
- The FSA’s structure is weighted to give much influence to our Networks (made up of supporter groups from all leagues). These Networks are a huge reservoir of knowledge allowing fan groups to share knowledge, experiences, and make useful contacts. Our Networks shape the agenda and delegate list for our Supporter Engagement meetings with the Premier League and EFL.
- Speaking of Networks our staff also offer those fan groups one-to-one support, constitutional advice, backing at club meetings, fundraising promotion, training, and club crisis management.
Of course that’s just a small taste of what we do as we have loads of other campaigns covering all manner of issue – to find our more read our Annual Review season 2018/19 or check out the Our Work section on this website.
Strength comes in numbers and the FSA is by fans, for fans.
