Committee Meeting 13/03/2023
Participating: Ignasi, Jacob, Jon, Nick, Signe, Simon, Vanda & Zorn
This is the constitutional first meeting of the Committee, after the AGM held the 25th of February. We spend the first bit of time welcoming the new members of the committee, Jacob and Vanda, and partly Ignasi, who joined halfway through the last season.
During the roundtable, everyone introduces themselves and their roles.
- Roundtable
Simon - Treasurer
Simon has been in the club for 41 years, went peeing at the wrong time during an AGM a while back, and was elected treasurer when he came back.
The treasurer keeps tabs on who has paid their subs, our general expenses and manages the accounts.
We currently have 144.000kr in the account, but have a few expenses from last year that haven’t been paid yet. Most players have paid their subs for the last year, which is good, but we now need to get this year paid.
Some players can’t figure out how to pay, and we have to manually help guide some players through the process. Seems like there might also be problems with adding payment details on the Klubmodul website.
It is suggested that we should look into setting up automatic recurring payments, to avoid having to chase people for it. At least for Social members it would make a lot of sense, as they would hopefully want to keep paying for years to come.
Simon seems to be slowly losing his mind, and has forgotten his talks with Stephanie from yesterday. We’re only on the first beer.
Nick – President
Nick has been a member since 1976, he joined when he was only 12 years old.
The President looks after the constitution, and is a figurehead of the club. He supports the committee where needed, and comes to any game or social even he can – as long as it’s not his wife’s birthday.
Nick is happy we took a hard stand on the way our last AD&D went out of control. Hopefully the team will foster a better group mentality going forward.
On Friday at 18:00 the Old Boys are meeting at Charlie Scotts, to lift a beer in memory of Noel.
Zorn – Head of Men’s
Zorn’s description of himself goes such: “Master of laws, keeper of sheds, painter of pitches, guardian of ties, arranger of games and washer of clothes.”
The men’s tour had to be cancelled due to a lack of signups and rising prices. Instead the team is going to Erritsø. They will be sharing bus with CSR and will play a 2 smaller games against both CSR and Erritsø.
Next Saturday is the Cup Quarter Finals against Speed, as the first official game. The team suffers a little from not having had any contract practise yet.
We just postponed a game against FRK, that was planned on the 9th of April. Since it’s during Easter, neither team would be able to post the team they want. It will be played in June instead.
Our player coaches are keeping up with training again this season, as we have yet to find an actual coach. They have just arranged a bit of contact training in Fælledparken last weekend.
Signe – Head of Ladies
Signe says that she does basically the same as Zorn, except for the clothes washing bit - she has people for that. (the ladies wash their kit in turns)
She also arranges the bus for all the ladies teams on away trips, and is part of the DRU tournament committee for the Ladies side.
Since last time there was a team building weekend with all the ladies teams invited, which went very well!
First game of the season is a friendly at Speed, where also Lund and Malmo will join.
Also there is talk of bringing back Prom Dress Rugby this year!
And as a seemingly first for the Exiles team, one of our players has won the Player of the Year award! Emilie from the Ladies team has been with Exiles for 5 years now, and she was elected as Player of the Year 2022 by DRU!
She will be handed a trophy by the chairman of DRU at the training on Thursday.
Stephanie – Social Secretary
The Social Secretary talks to bars, organizes parties, buys hotdogs and drinks beers.
Since AGM it’s been all 6 Nations. The team seems to enjoy Bootleggers Nørrebro for games on TV, but for after our own games well go to Bootleggers Nørreport as usual, to fit in the back room.
Stephanie mentions that about once a month there is no plan for a weekend, so she will attempt to make some events to fit in those slots. Maybe first event will be a “Beer Mile”, sometime late in April. She will check with the schedules of both teams.
Something that was needlessly tricky last year was Facebook logins. Steph had to go through others to do posts on the page. We will make sure Steph has access to that page.
Maybe do something with Bootleggers for Prom Dress Rugby?
Ignasi – Recruitment Secretary
The Recruitment Secretary helps arrange intro week other recruitment related events. That doesn’t mean that person has to do them himself, but should facilitate others in their recruitment efforts.
We have posters and fliers and should get to setting those up soon. Will get started on the next semester intro week, by the next Committee meeting.
We also need to follow up on the DTU focus to get more women into sports, that was mentioned at the AGM.
A main focus this year is getting back players who didn’t stick to it last year. One of the problems that Ignasi has identified is people disconnecting from the team, which makes them drift away and not return. Maybe the once a month social thing that Stephanie suggested, would be a good way of making people stick more with the team.
Jacob mentions that starting with a friend is important; we need to encourage players to bring more of their own friends. It is suggested that maybe we should have a referral bonus, which is added to the agenda at the end of the meeting.
Vanda says that more stuff needs to be visible on Social Media, since back when she joined, she wasn’t able to find any details about training or even see life on the team online.
We need people to take pictures and add them to our Social media. Need to tell players that it is fun.
Ignasi has a lot of ideas for Social Media posts:
Maybe we should create an Instagram Reel with new players who joined in the last half year and maybe also do introductions of our players.
Maybe we can encourage everyone to take pictures and send them to Vanda.
Ignasi and Vanda will make a plan for marketing for the year.
Vanda - Communications Secretary
Vanda is happy to have joined the committee, and has lots of ideas on how to improve our Social Media presence. She has actually already started posting on our sites.
The first post was about Women’s Day, which seems to have been well received. Her goal is to be quite active on Social media, so outsiders can see what is going on, and to know that this is a lively club worth joining. She will write short posts about interesting things that happens, like the ladies weekend trip. We have 580 followers on Instagram atm, which we should use and try to grow more.
Vanda has also found someone who is willing to do a free photoshoot of our games. He is from Switzerland, likes to take sport pictures, and has even covered Rugby before back home.
The member introduction idea that Ignasi suggested sounds very interesting!
Vanda plants to do clean-up of the images on Instagram. Many of them are outdated or boring. The committee agrees that the Communication Secretary has free reigns to do what they want on the Instagram account. They remind to also make sure that stuff is posted to the Facebook Socials group.
Jacob – DTU Liaison
Jacob is the new DTU Liaison, and is happy to be here. Jacob was elected because he stuck up his hand to ask a question at the wrong time. So well done Jacob!
The DTU Liaison is the link between the club and DTU. Jacob is Danish, lives on campus and attends DTU, so is practically the perfect candidate.
Jacob Identifies as a Danish speaker (one should have been there to catch that joke). We make a lot of fun with Jacob, but he is a good sport about it.
Someone from DTU Badminton wants the indoor gym hall, and Jacob has forwarded that to the Head of Ladies, since the Ladies team is currently using it.
We’re waiting for the mail to allow us to get the pitch, but we likely won’t get it till after Easter.
Jacob should make an effort to meet Ann Rose, who is the DTU Sports administrator.
Jon – Club Secretary
The Club Secretary takes notes in our meetings, so for this role a lot is said, but little is written down. However Jon has absolute control of what goes in the minutes – so as far as you are concerned, he delivers a tear-jerking speech for the ages, which nets him a standing ovation from the rest of the committee.
The DRU Repræsentantskabsmøde is next weekend. It was supposed to be 2 days, but the first Workshop day has been postponed for later. Jon will attend the meeting.
Jon has started an account on Holdsport and has just recently been given the Pro upgrade that DRU is providing. He will now do an initial setup of the team, and invite the Committee to try it out. The goal is to start using Holdsport as a replacement for both Klubmodul, but also the game signup process, from next year.
- Funding Options Ideas
The committee talks about what the need of the team is this year and what can and should be applied for in the different pools available to us: - The Ladies need new strips/kit, which we will apply DTU for.
- Outside the summer months it is quite dark around our changing rooms. It would be great to have more light installed, maybe some motion sensors. There is also a lack of an actual bathroom in the middle changing room, which is troublesome on game days, especially for when we host ladies tournaments. Vanda will write an application to DTU that Jacob will send.
- We have water bottles now, but one of the carries is broken. We should get a new one.
- Our trash can holders for when doing events, is made of cheap plastic, are broken and should be replaced.
- Our BBQ gas grill is very old, rusty and not even with the flames. We should replace it to make it easier for ourselves to do social events.
- It is suggested that we purchase a foldable wagon that could be brought along on the bus for away trips.
- New picnic tables for the area outside the changing rooms.
- Bibs for both teams for Coach, Medic and Waterboys, which is now a requirement from the 1st division games.
- DRU Recruitment Applications
DRU has focus on growing the membership numbers this year, so they have created 4 different pools of funds that can be applied for.
We discuss applying for money to compensate our coaches, as was one of the subjects brought up at the AGM.
We should also try to describe some recruitment activities, to which we can apply for funding.
Would it make sense to spend some money on online ads marketing?
- DRU Recruitment Workshop
The DRU has a recruitment workshop on the 19th of April. We want as many to go as possible.
Jon and Amanda will go, and hopefully more.
- The Exiles 55th Anniversary
This year is the clubs 55th anniversary, and we want to do something to draw in the former players and have some sort of party.
There is a long discussion about whether we should expand the regular AD&D with an “Old Boys” table, or whether it should have its own party.
Should we split it? It’s a lot of work and maybe not worth it, since there will maybe be fewer people interested than we expect. Can we even split it? Players would have to pay for 2 parties. Would there be enough Old Boys to do a game vs. the current team? Can we use the event as a recruitment drive?
It would have to be before end of October if we play a game, however the World Cup is also in the way.
We end up with a not quite clear solution for this issue, and will likely continue the debate later. For now we will ask around what players would be interested in doing.
Regarding the AD&D we ask Stephanie to find a date.
- Coach compensation
The AGM agreed that we as a club wanted to somehow compensate our coaches for their work, but left it up to the committee as to how to do so.
The committee spends a long time debating whether to compensate directly for travel expenses or to give a predefined amount of money.
There are tax rules that would allow us to give a certain amount of compensation to our volunteers, before we’d have to pay tax on that money or collect receipts.
The committee agrees that paying Social Subs is something everyone should do as a matter of principle. It’s a part of being in the club, and hopefully something they will keep doing forever. The member count is also important for the club as a whole.
The committee also wants to differentiate between a full time coach, and players who help out with coaching. Coaches put in a lot of time to plan and execute trainings. Time where they could have been home or doing other things. Player coaches would have been at the training anyway. So while they still put in a lot of effort, we feel the compensation is most important for the dedicated coach. Where there are one or two coaches per teams is a decision of the team. This ruling is also made by the committee and thusly not written in our bylaws. Therefore the committee with help from the team Heads, will decide on who we recognize as coaches, with regard to compensation.
In the end the committee decides to compensate coaches thusly:
Coaches will get free tickets to social events, and be compensated 3.600kr a year for their time and expenses.
Player will get free tickets to social events.
- What to do with FB Socials/Old Boys
We wanted to talk about this subject, but ended up not having the time.
It will be brought up at the next committee meeting.
- Referral Bonus
There was a long debate as to whether we could give some sort of bonus to a player when they recruit a new player.
The debate ranged between beers, merch or money. But also whether it was even something we wanted to encourage.
In the end we settled on working more with the team to encourage the good team spirit, welcoming people, and maybe buying a beer or two to people who do good for the club.