No. 5: Cooperative Club Model
Since our club's founding in 2014, we've tried to utilize a cooperative club model whenever possible--especially when it comes to our club's geography, size, governance, and relations with other Maine clubs.
Club Geography + Club Size
One inspiration for our club's name is the Roosevelt Trail, or the Route 302 road along the Theodore Roosevelt International Highway that was initially designed to be part of a highway that connected Portland, Maine and Portland, Oregon.
Specific to our club's name, Roosevelt Trail connects three communities we initially identified as the geographical footprint of our club. And though that specific geographical footprint has evolved over time, our club's aspiration to serve as a regional club has not shifted.
We've never had aspirations to become a statewide franchise, a multi-state franchise, or even an international franchise like other youth sports organizations in the United States.
Instead, we've always aspired to just be one of numerous regional clubs in Maine that could work together to play an important connecting role between the 40+ town-based clubs in our state and a statewide select program in our state.
This specific definition of our club's geography has not only motivated us to try to be as cooperative with other Maine soccer clubs as possible, but it's also helped us define our club's size.
Because we've deliberately focused on a handful communities to roster our teams, we've tried to be careful about emphasizing quality instead of quantity when rostering our teams. And we've tried to be careful to emphasize quality instead of quantity when designing our programming.
As a result, we've figured out over the last decade that an 18-team, 332-player club that offers playing opportunities to boys and girls ages 9-19 is probably the maximum ideal for our club's cooperative model.
Club Governance + Club Relations
When we're developing our programming and budgets, we see ourselves as a responsible steward of our members' funds to maximize our players' on-field experiences instead of a business that devotes a significant amount of our budget toward staff salaries and/or profit margins for investors.
We strongly believe amateur soccer clubs should be professional, but not professionalized. And our cooperative approach to our programming, budget, and registration fees reflect that belief.
Thinking of our club's players and their families as our members instead of our customers has also helped us develop good governance practices like including a club representative elected by members on our Board of Directors and providing numerous opportunities for our members to provide formal feedback and attend our Board meetings. And when we restructured our club has part of the process of becoming an independent club, we put into place a process for our club's coaches and directors to become co-owners of the club.
In fact, we currently have one majority owner, 15 co-owners who've accumulated (and continue to accumulate) actual equity in our club through their sweat equity, a number coaches and directors who are potential future co-owners, and a plan to eventually sell at least 10% of ownership in our club to members and/or supporters as we continue to mature as a multigenerational club. This cooperative approach within our club has also informed our attempts to be as cooperative with other Maine clubs as possible.
The primary reason we run our programming from January-June, for example, is so that our club complements--instead of competing with--the town-based U9-U14 Fall Classic clubs and high school programs in Maine. We love the fact that our players can focus on representing their communities and their schools from August-November, without also worrying about juggling responsibilities and schedules for our club.
And when it comes to our working relationships with our Maine State Premier League clubs, we try to adhere to the mantra of one of the former directors of that league: Compete on the field, and cooperate off the field.
- John C.L. Morgan
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