Struggling with volunteer recruitment at your grassroots club? Here’s how to find, welcome and keep volunteers who stick around.
Every grassroots club runs on the same fuel: people who turn up and do the jobs nobody gets paid for. Volunteer recruitment is the unglamorous work behind training sessions that run on time, kit that gets washed, fixtures that get organised and safeguarding that actually happens. Get it right and the club grows. Get it wrong and the same three or four people end up doing everything until they burn out and drift away. A tool like Spond, built for club communication and admin, can take a lot of the strain out of finding and managing volunteers.
The good news is that volunteer recruitment doesn’t have to mean cornering people at the clubhouse door on a Sunday morning. With a clear plan, and the right systems behind you, clubs can build a steady pipeline of helpers who stick around season after season rather than disappearing after one bad experience.
Why Volunteer Recruitment Matters for Grassroots Clubs
Without consistent volunteer recruitment, clubs end up leaning on the same small group of parents, coaches and committee members. That’s a fragile model, and the national picture backs it up. The government’s Community Life Survey found that formal volunteering fell from 23% of the UK population in 2019/20 to just 16% in 2021/22, a drop that grassroots sport has felt as much as any other part of the voluntary sector.
That’s exactly why volunteer recruitment can’t be treated as a one off job for pre season. It needs to be an ongoing habit, built into how the club runs, not a scramble every time someone steps down.
Where to Focus Your Volunteer Recruitment Effort
Good volunteer recruitment starts with the people who already know the club. Parents and carers of current players are the obvious first port of call, especially if their child has been at the club for a season or more. Ex players and older siblings often want to stay involved once they’ve stopped playing, and they already understand the club’s culture.
Beyond the immediate club family, local Facebook and WhatsApp community groups, school newsletters and parish noticeboards reach people who might never see a poster on the clubhouse wall. Some clubs also have success approaching local employers about corporate volunteering schemes, where staff are given paid time to support community organisations.
How to Ask Without Putting People Off
A vague shout out at the end of training rarely works. The more specific the ask, the more successful your volunteer recruitment will be. Instead of asking for “more helpers”, ask for a parent to run the raffle at Saturday’s home games, or someone to take match photos for the club’s social media. Small, well defined roles feel manageable in a way that open ended commitments don’t.
It also helps to ask people directly rather than relying on a general announcement. NCVO’s Time Well Spent research consistently finds that people volunteer because of the club or cause itself and the difference they feel they’re making, so framing the ask around what the role actually achieves, not just the gap it fills, tends to land better than a generic appeal.
Keeping the Volunteers You’ve Already Got
Retention is really just the second half of volunteer recruitment, and it’s the half clubs neglect most often. Saying thank you regularly, in person and not just at the end of season presentation, costs nothing and makes a real difference. Reimbursing travel and out of pocket costs matters too. NCVO research found that 14% of volunteers now worry about the cost of volunteering, up from 5% in 2019, so a club that covers petrol or kit costs is removing a real barrier to people staying involved.
Reducing the admin burden helps as well. Volunteers who spend their evenings chasing payments or untangling WhatsApp threads instead of doing the job they signed up for are far more likely to quit within a season.
How Spond Makes Volunteer Recruitment Easier
Spond supports volunteer recruitment by giving clubs a proper structure for it, rather than relying on memory and group chats. Committees can create dedicated volunteer groups inside Spond Club, post specific roles as events people can sign up to, and message the right subset of parents or members without spamming the whole club.
Clubs already using Spond to manage teams, fixtures and payments tend to find volunteer roles slot naturally into the same system, so there’s no separate spreadsheet to maintain and no volunteer role that quietly falls through the cracks between seasons.
Ready to Sort Out Your Club’s Volunteer Recruitment?
If volunteer recruitment feels like a constant battle at your club, Spond can help take some of the pressure off. It brings communication, sign ups and admin into one place, so committees spend less time chasing people and more time actually running the club.
Find out more about Spond for club admin, or read more on NCVO’s Time Well Spent research for the full national picture on volunteering.
