Our Annual General Meeting (AGM) is taking place on Monday 29 July at 7pm. You can join it on YouTube via the We Are Oldham fan media channel.
The AGM will include an update from the current OASF board and presentation of the financial accounts.
We will also be voting:
To elect new members of the OASF board.
Whether to disapply audit requirements for next year's accounts (requires at least a 75% majority to pass).
OASF members who signed up by 29 June will receive an email inviting them to vote. The voting period will close at 23:59 on Monday 29 July. If you need any support submitting your vote, please contact hello@oasf.co.uk before the deadline.
Election
The Election Management Group have confirmed the members nominated to stand as candidates for this year's election:
Mark Mills
Martin Barlow
You can download their nomination forms below.
Because there are fewer candidates than the number of places available (5), a confirmation vote will be held in line with our Election Policy. This means that OASF members will be asked to vote 'Yes' or 'No' for each candidate. Every candidate that receives more ‘Yes’ votes than ‘No’ votes will be elected to the OASF board, unless that number would be less than the minimum required (6) to form a board.
If elected, the candidates will be granted 3-year terms.
Existing Board Members
Matt Dean has confirmed he won't be standing at this year's election. We would like to thank Matt for the time and effort he has put into OASF in his time on the board. Matt played a key role in raising the profile of OASF, increasing our membership from less than 200 members to well over a thousand before we introduced a membership fee.
Disapplying Financial Audit
As a community benefit society, OASF is required to get its accounts professionally audited every year unless its members vote to disapply that requirement at the preceding AGM. If OASF members vote to disapply the financial audit requirement, OASF is instead required to get its accounts independently examined (such as by a qualified accountant), but this would be cheaper than an audit.
Financial auditing is very expensive as it must be done by a specialist auditor. Quotes for this work are around £3,000 to £4,000. That is why we are asking our members to vote to disapply the audit requirements for the next set of OASF accounts, as they did last year.
On its website, the FSA provides advice on the difference between an audit and an Independent Examination (IE):
"In essence, an audit will assure members that the accounts are right, whilst an IE will confirm to members that there is no evidence to suggest the accounts are wrong.
The IE does amount to an Independent Review of the Trust Accounts and therefore goes some way to meeting the principle of openness by providing a level of comfort to Trust Members that the accounts presented at the AGM have been subject to an independent review.
Nevertheless, it is for the members of each individual Trust to decide whether the IE is sufficient as a form of scrutiny of their Society Board Members."
The vote requires a majority of at least 75% to pass.
Members' Questions
We didn't receive any members' questions to answer at the AGM this year. Members may be able to ask questions on the night via the livestream comment box but we are also happy to answer any questions via email (at hello@oasf.co.uk) for those who want to do so privately.
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