Finding Volunteers
Volunteers are extremely important to aid the development of volleyball across the country. Without these individuals, the sport simply would not exist. Finding volunteers is not an easy task and it is made even more challenging with wider society issues such as the recovery from COVID19 and the current financial crisis all having an impact on people’s willingness and ability to give up their free time.
As a club, county or region it is important to think broadly about who you can engage, where you might find individuals and how you can encourage new people to volunteer.
Where to find new volunteers
| Within your Club Asking people within your club network if they are willing to offer some time is a quick and easy way to boost your potential volunteer pool. Many people don’t volunteer simply because they’ve never been asked to! | Outside your Club Broadening your search to include the wider community can bring in fresh perspectives, skills, experiences and make your volunteer pool more diverse. |
| Members | Local Volunteer Centres |
| Young People | Community Voluntary Services (CVS) |
| Parents | Search engines |
| Schools, colleges and universities |
Skills Audit
Plan ahead, spend some time identifying gaps in volunteering, define roles and tasks and the skills required. This will help you be specific in your promotion and will help potential volunteers decide whether to get involved or not.
A skills audit is a great way of map out the skills, experience and behaviours required to achieve your clubs ambitions. The benefits of completing a skills audit include:
- Being able to identify people's motivations and interest areas.
- Identifying any hidden talent that you can put to good use.
- Confirming people's interest in continuing to volunteer.
- Revealing any skills gaps and helping you plan how to fill them.
- Flagging any training and support needs.
- Supporting you with succession planning so you can continue to operate without disruption.
You can find more information on how to undertake a skills audit here.
Recruiting volunteers
Attracting New Volunteers
There are a variety of ways to engage different groups of people and communication is for attracting and locating volunteers.
- Let people try it out - Offering taster sessions for volunteering roles can
- Bring a friend - Encourage existing members or volunteers to introduce a friend to the club
- Embed volunteering within the club's culture - Show how supporting each other is what makes your club a great community.
- Parental Engagement - Remind parents when they sign up their children that the club relies on volunteers.
- Create a rota - Ask members and parents when they can help out.
More information about practical tips can be found here.
Key Considerations
It is important to think about the key considerations for recruiting volunteers. Your key considerations may include:
- Communication - Keep in contact with your volunteers as much as possible. Find out how their first few sessions went and check back in regularly to see how they are getting on. As communication is the key to success in recruiting and engaging new volunteers, Sport England's Buddle have resources available to guide clubs on how to effectively communicate with volunteers.
- Inductions - Welcoming your new volunteers is vital to making a good first impression. A well-planned welcome process, or induction, can help a new volunteer feel supported, informed, valued, and can enable them to make a contribution straight away.
- Induction guide - induction of a new volunteer should be a planned process and is an important part of making volunteers feel welcomed and valued.
- Induction checklist - the priority when introducing a new volunteer to the volleyball family and their role is to give them a full induction. Keep it as light-touch as possible, only include the information essential to their role, make sure they understand and are happy with what is being asked of them
- Shadow or handover process in place
- Ongoing support by committee and/or volunteer coordinator
- Volunteer coordinator (if possible) - Given that volunteers are essential to the effective running of volleyball clubs, it is recommended that clubs consider appointing a club volunteer coordinator. The volunteer coordinator is a designated person within your club, looking after volunteer management and supporting the recruitment of volunteers which can bring enormous benefits to your club.
The role of the club volunteer coordinator could focus on:- Recruiting new volunteers
- Getting to know the club membership
- Spreading the workload across a variety of people
- Identifying the volunteer needs of the club
- Rewarding and developing current volunteers
- Providing feedback to help people be effective in their roles
- Creating a stronger, more sustainable club/association
- Matching people to tasks and roles - Knowing what you need help with and understanding people’s interests and skills will enable you to match them with the tasks and roles that best suit them.
- Warm welcomes - Meeting and greeting new volunteers for their first few sessions and giving them a big, friendly welcome will go a long way to making them feel part of the team.