02 | On the Front Foot

Committee Overload: recruiting and keeping the volunteers your club actually needs 

Robert Crowe, Co-Founder, Head of Club Development, TeamFeePay

Welcome back to On the Front Foot.

Last time we talked money. A fair few of you came back and said money’s only half of it, the other half is that the same handful of people do the lot. So that’s this one.

I was at a club AGM recently and it took about twenty minutes. Nobody stood against anybody. Same names, same jobs, everyone back in by default, home before nine. At the time I thought it had gone well. It hadn’t. Nothing had changed, and the same five or six people were carrying it for another year.

I should tell you how I ended up in this seat myself.

I always wanted to coach, but between playing, working, family life etc, work just got in the way and I didn’t think I would have the time. So I was the parent standing on the sidelines watching my girls play at my local club. I knew I didn’t want to coach them, but then the conversation happened – a very good friend of mine took over the first team – he put it to me – you’ve always talked about it and we have a role in the 2010’s that would be perfect for you. I knew the lead coach and it seemed like a nice fit. So, off I went to the first session and that was me, never looked back since. The feeling of giving something back and most importantly seeing the players develop and grow into young men has been something that I never expected to get from coaching.  

After all that time, here’s where I’ve landed. Most clubs haven’t got a volunteer shortage. They’ve got an asking problem.

And some of that is on us, the ones already in the hot seats. Listen to how we talk about the job. If all anyone ever hears is the grind, the late nights and the stuff nobody wants to do, why would they put their hand up? We moan about it, keep doing it, and wonder why there’s no queue to replace us.

The people are there. They’re at the side of your pitch every Saturday morning with a coffee. They’ve just never been asked properly, and the one time they were, it was for a job nobody had ever described.

So here’s where I’d start.

The WhatsApp message to 200 parents. The plea at the AGM. The post on the club Facebook page. I’ve tried all of them and they get you very little. When you ask everybody, you’ve asked nobody.

Every volunteer I’ve ever recruited, and every job I’ve ever been talked into myself, came from one person asking one person to their face. [Robert: tie back to your own story here, e.g. “It’s how [name] got me.”

It helps hugely to say why them. “You’re the only one who actually reads the emails.” “You sorted that tournament out in a morning.” People say yes to being needed for something specific far more readily than to filling a gap. Let them picture themselves in the job and what they’d get out of it, whether that’s a new skill, a bit of pride, or just being part of something.

Then give them a finish line. One season. Two years. People will take on a job they can see the end of, and plenty stay on anyway once they’ve found their feet. Almost nobody signs up for something open-ended.

4. Look after the ones you’ve already got

Volunteers rarely leave because they’ve stopped caring. They leave because they’re worn out, or nobody ever said thanks, or they’ve quietly become the only person on earth who knows how something works and can’t get out from under it.

Three things worth doing:

• Don’t dump. Handing somebody the job nobody wants, on their own, with no handover, is how you lose them by Christmas and put off the next three who watched it happen.
• Say thanks, specifically. Not “thanks to all our volunteers” at the presentation night. “Thanks for sorting the refs every week, I know what that involves.” The specific one lands. The general one washes over.
• Get it out of one person’s head. Two names on the bank account. Files on a shared drive, not somebody’s laptop. Write down how the pitch booking actually works. Every club has at least one person it couldn’t survive losing, and that’s not a sign of a well-run club, it’s a sign of a lucky one.

Falkirk Foundation, Scotland

Falkirk Foundation are a good example of what happens when you take the misery out of the jobs.

They’re bigger than most clubs reading this, with around 1,100 members and more than 100 volunteer coaches. But the grind was one you’ll know. Paper direct debits, reports built by hand, and safeguarding and medical details that existed but weren’t always where a coach could get at them.

Now families register and book online and payments collect automatically. Failed ones get retried after seven days, which matters more than it sounds because most turn out to be an expired card, not a decision not to pay. They collect 96% of the membership income they’re owed each month. Admin that took days a month now takes hours, and coaches pull up safeguarding, medical and consent details on a QR code at the side of the pitch.

Nobody stays a volunteer for the paperwork. Every hour you take off somebody might keep them for another season.

Their administrator Gareth Davies put it like this: “It enables us to manage our finances, keep our data secure, all in one place, and makes everything so much simpler.”

You can read the full story here.

Fund of the Week

Barclays Female Coaches for Girls. Closes at 5pm on 4 November, or earlier if the money runs out first. It’s open to not-for-profit UK clubs running girls’ football (and cricket and tennis), and gives £200 per coach for up to two coaches to do a Level 1 award, with safeguarding and first aid costs covered too.

The coach can be a player, a parent of a player or an existing volunteer. So offering to pay for someone’s qualification is a good way to start the conversation with a parent who’s never thought of themselves as a coach.

More about TeamFeePay 

Every fortnight we’ll introduce you to one of the people behind TeamFeePay. Today it’s Connor Hayes, our Key Account Manager, who has seen grassroots football from both sides of the touchline. He grew up playing for St Patricks, Deanby Youth Club and Newington, retired at the grand old age of 15, and moved into coaching at 18. He spent nine years at Cliftonville F.C., with a year at Preston North End while at university, and this season he’s at Ballymena United F.C. getting their reserves ready for senior football.

For Connor, grassroots football is cold Saturday mornings at Mallusk playing fields, Deep Heat in the changing rooms and the queue at the burger van. His favourite memory is his Cliftonville 2011s beating Linfield in the League Cup final, in one of his last games as manager. Linfield’s manager was one of his best mates, who sat beside him at work. As Connor says, “it’s always nice to get one up on your mates.”

“One of the biggest challenges clubs face is time and volunteer burnout. Coaching a grassroots team isn’t just turning up for training and matches. It’s the setting up, the tidying away, the phone calls, the messages, the planning and the time away from friends and family. It’s really an unpaid part-time job. I’ve been on that side of it, and after nearly four years at TeamFeePay, I know everything we do is about making life easier for those volunteers. Without grassroots football, there is no football.”

Like Connor, most of our team have been there, done it and worn the t-shirt as players, coaches, parents and volunteers.

Over to you