FOR ALL INFORMATION ABOUT THE VOLUNTEER PROGRAMME IN YORKSHIRE, PLEASE CONTACT IAN POWELL

PLEASE REMEMBER THAT VOLUNTEERS ARE VERY WELCOME BUT ANY INVOLVED WITH JUNIOR WORK MUST BE CRB-CHECKED AND UNDERTAKE A FULL PROGRAMME OF
CHILD WELFARE/GOOD PRACTICE INSTRUCTION.

A simple guide to understanding and making the most of the Volunteers you have…...

SPORT VOLUNTEERING:THE FACTS.

Over 5 million volunteers contribute to sport in England.
Over 1 Billion hours of sports volunteering contributed each year.
Volunteers help sustain over 100,000 affiliated sports clubs, with over 8 million members.

All clubs no matter from which background they are from depend on that hard core of Volunteers who complete their tasks and many more besides, often without any remuneration, or thank you. But we need them and definitely want more! Having Volunteers is not just the only answer, there are lots of Community Sites and Community Development Agencies that help with placements of people, give good and accurate business advice and more importantly allow organisations or clubs to access funding to assist in their development.

All over the country Voluntary agencies are working closer together to enable a stronger and clearer pathway to access various opportunities. NACVS (National Association of Councils for Voluntary Service), CVS (Council for Voluntary Service), VBx (Volunteer Bureaux), RCCs (Rural Community Councils) under the guidance of central government have come together to stop the ever increasing duplication and overlapping of resources. All the above agencies are manned by professional people who are paid through central government and can be found, often in the high street or by contacting your local authority. Their advice is free and can cover a vast and ever widening spectrum of interests. It may be you need advice on planning, CASC, rates, development plans, legal issues, in fact anything you can think of, these agencies are there to help you.

“But How Do I get More Volunteers” I hear you ask?

Earlier this year the ECB published a comprehensive guide to Volunteering In Cricket this is free to every affiliated cricket club in the country and will walk you through every step you need in how to recruit your volunteers, how to identify the right volunteer to the right job, attracting young players and volunteers to be involved in sponsorship potential, if you haven’t applied and received your copy then log on to www.ecb.co.uk/volunteers and register NOW.

One of the issues that has evolved from this document is the key roles and responsibilities that personnel have within a club. People wanting to become involved with a sports club may not have the time to spend 10 to 20 hours a week coaching, helping behind the bar or working on the ground, so a job description for some of the main aspects of running your club have been put together from ‘Fund raiser’ to ‘Chair Person’, ‘Assistant groundsman’ to ‘Secretary’ the list is never ending but essential if you are to keep those people that we all need and require to help run the club. By being specific through a job description you can designate the amount of time they need to put in and only that time, it may be 4 hours a week to help with the junior coaching rather than just … ‘well we run coaching Tuesdays and Thursday evenings from 6.00pm’.