First of all, on behalf of the BWFCST Steering Group, We'd like to thank all those who attended the first open Members’ meeting last week at the Macron.

What a fantastic turnout with over 800 in attendance, showing yet again what this club actually means to the people of Bolton. Not to mention the thousands of fans around the globe who followed the event on social media! It really is a humbling experience when you see so many people from all walks of life coming together with a common goal… to safeguard the future of our beloved club.

New Start

I think we were all a little apprehensive about how this meeting would be received after an emotionally charged launch meeting on the 6th of January, when over 1,000 supporters unanimously voted to set up the Trust at a very uncertain time in the club’s history.

Fast forward 10 weeks… 3 court appearances for the club, a community led bid to buy the club by the Trust, not much change on the field with relegation now looking a certainty, a new interim manager and Dean Holdsworth’s Sports Shield acquisition of the club too. Phew!

We were delighted and impressed with the attendance, the quality of the questions and the interest everyone had in understanding what BWFCST is all about

Question & Answers

We hope you all found the Q&A session as interesting and informative as we did. For those that couldn’t attend, Marc Iles from The Bolton Evening News was kind enough to live blog the whole event which you can read about here. We will be posting a transcript of all the questions and answers on the BWFCST website soon.

The purpose of these meetings is not only to inform supporters about on-going Trust matters such as the forthcoming elections and board constitution, but also to use as valuable feedback for BWFCST. We want to hear from all of you and urge as many of you as possible to convert your pledge of support into a membership as soon as possible.

Membership

This brings us onto memberships and the difficulties some of you may have experienced whilst buying your memberships online.

A number of supporters told us they were finding it difficult using the website to join the Trust because of payment or account problems. After receiving this feedback, we have taken steps to improving the user experience of the website.

Supporters were reporting that they wanted to pay via credit or debit card but didn’t necessarily want to pay through PayPal or create an account with them, so we have applied for an additional provider (Skrill) which wouldn’t involve opening an account and which we will announce and provide details on when available.

We have added a 'Reset Password' page to our main menu navigation. Using this page will allow you to reset your password to a more memorable one and re-gain access to your account to then buy your membership in no time.For any fans who are still experiencing problems with the website, we have added a ‘Help’ button to the bottom right corner of the website where we ask for your name, email address, telephone number (optional) and problem. We aim to respond to any enquiries within 24 hours, even signing you up over the phone if you prefer to do it that way.

All Aboard!

All in all, we hope you’ll agree it’s been a very positive start in the life of the Supporters’ Trust. Don’t forget, the Bolton Wanderers Supporters’ Trust is still only three months old and if the next three months are as eventful as the last three, we’d advise you jump aboard the BWFCST express, hang on and enjoy the ride!