The fundraising committee met last night at the Lookers Vauxhall Stadium and were pleased to welcome a number of new faces and elected a new chair.

Ed Jones, Gerry Cummins and John Allman all attended their first meeting and joined Mark Salmon, Geoff Leith, Ian Saxby and Tracey Smith for a very productive meeting.

Tracey Smith has taken over as chair of the committee due to Brian Burns having an ever increasing workload with him sitting on the Ops Board, CFU board, Inclusive blues committee and all of the work he does with the Youth Academy. The committee would like to place on record their thanks for all of the hard work and many hours he has put in over the last couple of years and are happy that he will attend meetings when he can.

There are a number of updates to tell you about:

Seals Lottery – we are appealing for a volunteer or two to take on this project. Do you know anyone who is IT Literate, has some available spare time during the week and who is prepared to help us with this regular fixed income stream? If anyone is interested in taking on this role which includes data input, letter writing, information download and communication across the football club then please contact fundraising@chesterfc.com

Squad Builder Collection Boxes – each turnstile for our fans now has a collection box fitted to the wall (they are blue, perhaps unsurprisingly). Fans can donate as little or as much as they like into these boxes, they are great for relieving you of loose change! Donations totalled over £10,000 last year to the football club, thank you to all of our wonderful fans who have donated to the football club.

Race Night – we recently held a Race Night in the Blues Bar with all proceeds going to the Youth Section. It was a brilliant success with the night being a sell out and raising over £2,000. We have to thank Jonathan Kerr for running the whole evening, he provided us with a top class set up, he provided the staff and all of the equipment and literature free of charge. Jonathan has very kindly agreed to run two more race nights, one will be in March 2016 and one again next September which again will be for the Youth Section. We will announce details closer to the time.

Car boot – the committee are looking into the possibility of holding a car boot sale on Sundays on the car park. Tracey is making the application to the council for a licence, the lease covers us for this but we need a license first. We will keep you informed of any developments.

Fan zone – the committee are also looking into the possibility of creating a ‘fan zone’ similar to what Tranmere Rovers FC had. This is in the early stages and we would like to thank Tranmere Rovers FC for all of their help with advising us how they set theirs up.

Christmas Raffle – it may be early October but we do need to think about the Christmas Raffle. We would like to appeal to fans for support, we need help with raffle prizes. Do you work anywhere that would be willing to donate a prize? Do you have anything you would be willing to donate as a prize? We also need volunteers to help distribute Raffle Tickets. Can you hand them out at a game? Can you take any to work with you? Last year the raffle made £7,000 for the club, again these are vital funds, thank you for all of your support. We are also looking for sponsors for the back of the tickets, an excellent opportunity for any business with very reasonable rates. We will be printing 30,000 tickets, that is potentially 30,000 new customers for your business! Get in touch if you can help in any way with the Christmas Raffle via fundraising@chesterfc.com

Crowd Funder – most of the rewards are now in. If your item has come in you will have received an email from Tracey. Many people have already collected their items but we are still waiting for a small number of items, the watch, the Steve Burr had a dream T Shirt, the dressing gown, pint glass and Seals Pin Badge. We will contact you as soon as they are in. Thank you to every body who supported the campaign. To raise £25,500 in less than four weeks proves just how well supported the team is, thank you from everybody at the club.

If anyone else would like to join the fundraising team then please come along, everybody is welcome. We meet every month and can always accommodate more volunteers. If you are interesting in helping out then please contact us via fundraising@chesterfc.com or call the club.