But it still makes it no more representative if those members don't participate. In that scenario, they may be able to say they are representing 'X' number of thousand supporters but how can they really say that is true when they dont know the views of those supporters because those supporters dont participate in anything. They can only ever represent those fans who participate, if they were to claim something else it would be bull****
Think of it in terms of this website .... its open to all, its free to all, and we welcome all ..... if someone new were to register right now, they would have a member number somewhere in the 3100 range ..... yet, because we prune our member list to keep them realistic and the database less bloated, we only report a total of about 1500 members. If we go one step further and split active and inactive members, then we have less than a thousand 'active' members, and splitting it still further, probably around 500 who have actually posted something ..... We are not representative of the whole support, but we are representative of the 500 or so diehards who post on here ... in the same way as the Trust is representative of those members who choose to participate in meetings, or respond to any surveys they may send out (if they do that).
I like your idea CaleyD, and I can see where you are coming from, but you cannot force people to be a member of any organisation, even by default.