Help finding volunteers
Once you know what roles you need to fill, and the skills needed you will have a clearer idea of the type of volunteer you need. To make sure that your club or sports organisation’s culture and processes are set up to attract and keep volunteers, it may be worth considering.
Planning your recruitment drive:
- Decide who is going to be responsible for recruiting volunteers
- Decide how many volunteers you need and exactly what you need volunteers to do?
- Decide how you will recruit your volunteers
- Devise a list of qualities, skills, attributes, and interests that you want from volunteers.
- Outline what your club or sports organisation can offer to volunteers.
Marketing your volunteer opportunities
How do you get your recruitment message across to your potential volunteers? Think about your target audience – who is best placed to fill those roles e.g., parents and young leaders and how you will reach them?
Ways to market your recruitment opportunities.
- Print posters, leaflets, and other printed materials
- Word of mouth – speak to members or parents to see if they would be interested
- Contact the local press, radio, and other media sources.
- Advertise on your club website or through your newsletter and email
- Use local gala days
- Connect to your networks, e.g., County Durham Sport
- Complete our Volunteer Opportunities form (see useful downloads)
Recruiting from outside your club or sports organisation can bring many benefits:
- Specialist skills like fund-raising or publicity
- New vision and energy for the club
- New contacts that can introduce you to new networks
- New enthusiasm
- A wider community of membership
What is special about your club or sports organisation?
Often volunteers not only attracted just to the role itself, but volunteering enables them to give something back to the local community. Make sure you understand what is special about your club as this will help you to attract volunteers and keep them.
Removing barriers
If you are not getting enough of the right volunteers, you need to think about what the possible barriers are preventing people from volunteering. This could include:
- An unintentional bias to groups of people
- The role is not clear enough
- A lack of sensitivity to age, race, culture, religion, gender, or extra support needs
- The need for references and disclosures
- Publicity that does not stand out
- Generic recruitment messages that do not appeal to anyone in particular
- Think internal as well as external for potential volunteers
See the Club Matters link for more support on finding & recruiting volunteers
Recruiting volunteers (sportenglandclubmatters.com)
