CAS Trust this weekend 'pushed through the clouds' reaching its primary target for membership of 1000 Addicks

This makes Charlton's one of the most successful supporters Trusts in England and certainly in the Championship.  Charlton fans have a history for this kind of supporter activity which is something to be proud of. CAS Trust is also highly innovative and successful on a number of other fronts including its website.

How CAS Trust compares to other Championship Trusts

• Leeds 9000 (includes free members we think)
• Reading 2000 (combines Trust and Supporter's club activities like travel)
• Blackburn 1230
• Charlton 1037 (total members and subscribers = 2644, total network = 4687)
• Sheffield Wednesday 850
• Derby 770
• Leicester 470

As year one memberships come to an end we are expecting the number of active members to dip below 1000 on a temporary basis as some will choose not to renew their memberships. Our feedback survey showed that upwards of 80% believed we were doing a good job so we are hoping the number of non renewals will be minimal.

We believe that a supporter’s trust should be judged on what it achieves, here are some of our year one accomplishments:

• Building a voice for Charlton fans - through our match day stall, magazine (with a quarterly circulation of circa 5,000) membership drive, surveys, and website that recently achieved a peak recently of 30,000 hits in a month
• Building a dialogue with the football club – this will require a bit of a ‘reboot’ with the new owners and senior members of staff
• Preserving Charlton Athletic for this and future generations - ACV was part of that, of course having a Trust is another, but perhaps we will be able to do more on this in the future. Another way is by helping to increase our attendances and we've made a start on that too.

However, as with any membership based organisation, non renewals will be a factor. We believe these could be reasons for it:

• People mean to renew but just don’t get round to it. After a certain amount of time we have to delete the member records and recycle the share numbers
• Some members may have changed their email addresses and as such will not be receiving the ‘renewal’ emails from us
• Some prefer to pay their £5 in person at our match day stall but may not have attended a home games since their membership expired
• Some members may not be happy with the direction of the Trust. In these cases we would love to hear those views to see if there are any areas we can improve on. We always welcome the views of our members

Overall I hope people will see that we are doing a lot and decide to renew. You even get a free badge - now available! (£2 rrp plus postage and packing)

Richard Hicks

Trust Membership Officer

Ed We hope you like the abstract art from our regular graphical artist the STIG