FC United: Local football club or community enterprise?

FC United of Manchester – a football club owned and run by the local community – has taken local social responsibility to a new level, as Austin Macauley finds out

Given it was dismissed as little more than a protest stunt when it launched, the fact that FC United of Manchester will celebrate its tenth birthday at the end of this season is pretty impressive.

That it’ll be doing so in a brand new stadium – partly paid for by its own fans – simply reinforces the fact that this is a football club that intends to be a permanent fixture. FC United has worked its way up the divisions to stand three promotions away from the Football League, but results off the pitch during that time have been just as important in sustaining the club’s success.

Owned and run by the community
FC United was formed in 2005 by a group of Manchester United fans in protest against American businessman Malcolm Glazer’s takeover of the club. The move was also fuelled by increasing disenchantment among fans more generally about the way bigger clubs were being run with seemingly little regard for supporters.

The fans wanted to create something much more closely linked to its local community that could be a force for positive change. One look at FC United’s current community work programme is enough to tell you that they succeeded, probably exceeding even their own expectations.

Robin Pye, community and education manager, has £220,000 at his disposal this year – between a quarter and a third of the club’s turnover – to spend on three main areas of activity. The first two are what might be described as traditional community work territory for football clubs: sports coaching for young people and youth work with 14-19 year olds. But the third strand, which is also the club’s biggest, is what sets FC United apart from most other clubs. It runs an education programme aimed at unemployed adults that is delivered across a variety of settings in Manchester.

‘In most cases it’s not really a football club,

it’s a community enterprise’.

Many professional clubs offer training to the unemployed, often in football coaching. ‘The idea is that football can be used as a hook – “I’ll get out of bed for that” – if they see it advertised at a job centre,’ says Pye. ‘Out of that they learn soft skills in terms of communication and leadership skills, their personal fitness improves, their confidence improves. A lot of football clubs do that.

‘Football clubs can do that because they are in the football business and have a brand and credibility.’

But FC United has taken it to another level. Over the last year more than 200 people have taken part in courses. ‘To even think of that as a possibility you have to conceive the football club as a different type of organisation to one that we have come to understand as a football club – in most cases often it’s not really a club, it’s a community enterprise.’

‘Another way of thinking about a football club is as a membership organisation which is owned by the membership, says Pye. ‘We have a high proportion of members actively involved in running aspects of the club. In most clubs that’s done by paid employees. At our club it’s done by fans and it’s one way they support their club.’

Working with local organisations
With more than 300 fans volunteering to help run the club, FC United has become something of a conduit for volunteering, helping to train people for local community organisations such as those running befriending schemes for older people and others experiencing isolation. Pye believes that once you adopt this alternative view of a football club – an organisation owned and run by members to benefit their community – ‘there are so many things you can organise on the back of it’.

Simple but ingenious things like Big Coat Day, when fans bring in unwanted clothing on matchday for distribution to the homeless. It was one of the initiatives that helped FC United win Football Foundation community club of the year award in 2012.

‘If we come up with a really good idea, the club will do everything it can do to support it,’ says Pye. ‘Supporters cite the quality of our community work as a reason for supporting the club.’

A mistake that too many clubs make, says Pye, is to work in isolation – setting up programmes without looking around to find out what’s already there.

‘The way we go about our community work is we go to other community organisations and say “how can we work with you?” The last thing we are going to do is turn up and say “we are taking over”.’

‘The Premier League give their member clubs around £1m to spend on community work so really their main problem is how to spend it all in the most effective way. It’s easy in these circumstances to see working with other organisations as something that is just going to slow you down and stop you getting that money spent in your community.

‘What we at least try to do is identify within a community who we want to work with and maintain a dialogue with those groups. It’s time consuming but it’s the right way to approach things. I suspect clubs our size are better at doing it that than the big clubs. We’ve put resources into somebody who can build those links and develop methodically.’

Football stadium as community asset
After spending the last nine years sharing grounds with other clubs, FC United will have a home of its own this October. Its supporters raised more than £2m towards the costs of a £5.5m stadium – mainly through a community shares issue – with the remainder coming from the Football Foundation, Sport England, the government and Manchester Council.

Situated on playing fields in Moston, north Manchester, the council’s support for the stadium is on the condition that it is a facility for the local community, including partner junior club Moston Juniors FC.

Pye laments the ‘old English model of 20-22 matches a season, the odd rock concert or a beer festival’ way of using a football stadium. ‘We expect a great deal more than that and are very keen to make sure it’s an asset for the community,’ he says. There are plans to include a gym and act as a base for other sports clubs and societies.

After the initial burst of energy that sent FC United on its way, the new stadium is just what it needs to keep the momentum going almost a decade on. The early, heady days of FC United getting crowds in excess of 3,000 appear to be over for now, although the side still manage gates close to 2,000 in a league where the average among other teams is just 300.

‘One of the ways of judging where the club is at is in the songs that fans sing,’ says Pye. ‘At first it was anti-Glazer songs and a mix of old United songs. Now the anti-Glazer songs are still there and you hear a whole songbook of FC United songs about who were are and what we represent.

‘As a club we have changed quite a bit from being a protest movement to something very positive.’

• Find out more about FC United here.