Attracting Volunteers

Positive Club Culture

How does your club’s culture affect volunteers?

A club's culture is made up of the values and beliefs of its members. A positive culture – where volunteers feel appreciated and supported - can help attract volunteers while a negative culture will do just the opposite. One of the challenges a club faces is creating a 'contributing' culture. This is where members take part in running the club rather than treating it as a service.

To understand how cultures can gradually emerge within an organisation, read the story of the Five Monkeys.

There once was a cage that contained five monkeys. Also inside the cage hung a banana on a string with a set of stairs beneath it. Before long, a monkey went up the stairs towards the banana. As soon as he touched the stairs, the other four monkeys were sprayed with cold water.

After a while, another monkey approached the banana. When he reached the stairs, the other four monkeys were again sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when any of the monkeys climbed the stairs, the other monkeys tried to prevent it.

Then the cold water was turned off and one monkey was removed from the cage and replaced with a new one. The new monkey saw the banana and attempted to climb the stairs. To his surprise, all of the other monkeys attacked him. After another attempt and attack, he knew that if he tried to climb the stairs he would be assaulted.

Another of the original five monkeys was replaced with a new one. The newcomer went to the stairs and was attacked. The previous newcomer took part in the punishment with enthusiasm. Again, a third monkey was replaced with a newcomer. The new monkey made it to the stairs but was attacked.

Two of the four monkeys that beat him had no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they were participating in the beating of the newest monkey. After the fourth and fifth original monkeys were replaced, all the monkeys that had been sprayed with cold water had been replaced.

Nevertheless, none of the monkeys approached the stairs ever again. Why not? Because as far as they knew, that's the way it had always been around there.

Author: Costas Markides

Club Culture Assessment

Is your club culture healthy? The key indicators below are in the Club Culture Assessment template for discussion with your committee.

Some key indicators that your club culture is healthy:

  • most players stay for a few years
  • membership has increased or stayed the same during the past five years
  • it is easy to get people to volunteer
  • It is easy to get people to join a committee
  • committee members enjoy their role and remain involved for a number of years
  • committee meetings are efficient and effective
  • volunteers help for more than one season
  • people support social functions
  • people support fundraisers
  • there are few (or no) harassment/abuse/conflict issues within the club
  • any issues are dealt with well
  • club policies are supported (e.g. participation)
  • officials are respected and appreciated by most members
  • the workload is spread between many people
  • new people are made to feel welcome
  • the committee knows why people leave the club or their volunteer role
  • our club is well respected in the wider community.

If your club culture is not healthy and change is needed, develop a Culture Change Plan.

If the responses from your Club Culture Assessment suggest that change is needed, aCulture Change Plan can help. While change – of any degree – can take a considerable amount of time, the key is to maintain broad and ongoing communication between your committee and members. Communication is pivotal in addressing and solving any issues.

Steps to making change happen:

  1. Be aware of why change is needed.

Identify behaviours, perceptions and other things that need to change. Identify where the club currently is, where it wants to be and how it is going to get there. (Note: Explain the importance of volunteers within the club, why you are looking at the club's culture and the possibility of change within the club.)

  1. Have the desire to make change.

If members understand the important role that volunteers play and acknowledge that a problem exists with the club's current culture, there should be a desire to make a change. However, most people don't like change so be sensitive to people's needs. The more you understand people's needs, the better you will be able to manage change.

  1. Share knowledge.

Communicate with your members and listen to their concerns/suggestions about the proposed changes. Consultation is critical when making changes. Your members need to be empowered to suggest their own solutions and responses with support from the club's committee.

  1. Create an ability to change.

Create an environment where members are supported to change and implement the strategies needed to make change happen. Change must be realistic, achievable and measurable. When making changes, consider what you want to achieve, why you want the change and how you will know that it has been achieved. Who is affected by this change and how will they react to it?

  1. Reinforce the value of successful change.

This could include communicating how many new volunteers the club has gained or positive quotes from new volunteers.

Add to Action Plan

Develop strategies for assessing your club culture.

Discuss the Club Culture Assessment with the committee

Create a survey to assess the culture of your club.

Create a plan for promoting, conducting and reviewing the survey.

Develop a culture change plan.

Strategies for Assessing Club Culture

Club Culture Assessment Strategies
Strategy / Who is responsible / When
Discuss Club Culture Assessment with the committee / PB / Next meeting
E.g. Collate membership and volunteer changes during past 5 years. / JC - secretary / By end May 13
Design a survey for current members. / SS / By end June 13
Contact and survey some members who have recently left the club or their role. / SS / By end June 13
Collate survey results / PB / By end July 13
Discuss with committee / committee / Next meeting
Develop a culture change plan if needed. / committee / End Oct 13

Club Culture Assessment

Many ticks: positive club culture. Only a few ticks: change is needed.

Positive Club Culture Indicators: / Tick if yes 
Most players stay for a few years.
Membership has increased or stayed the same during the past five years.
Committee meetings are efficient and effective.
It is easy to get people to volunteer.
It is easy to get people to join a committee.
Committee members enjoy their role and remain involved for a number of years.
Volunteers help for more than one season.
People support social functions.
People support fundraisers.
There are few (or no) harassment/abuse/conflict issues within the club.
Any issues are dealt with well.
Club policies are supported (e.g. participation).
Coaches feel well supported
Officials are respected and appreciated by most members.
The workload is spread between many people.
New people are made to feel welcome.
The committee knows why people leave the club or their volunteer role.
Our club is well respected in the wider community.
Total ticks / of

Culture Change Plan

The Club Culture Assessment has identified a need for the following changes:

Culture Change Plan
Concern / Strategy for change / Who is responsible / When to implement / Notes / 
Workload too great for most volunteers / Appoint a Volunteer Coordinator / team / Committee / May / Will need role description.
More recognition / Develop recognition plan / Joe Bloggs / Oct 2013 / Plan developed, communicated and implemented, $
Coaches feel unsupported / Appoint mentors to the junior coaches / SS / June 13 / Vouchers for mentors / 
People leaving club or role / Develop exit interview or survey / GH / July 12 / Both for leaving club and role
Hold social event / Mid season Friday twilight BBQ / JB / Mid June

Attracting Volunteers

Promoting your club

What benefits does your club offer volunteers?

Volunteering can provide many benefits to individuals, clubs and the community as a whole. Because people volunteer for different reasons, it is important to outline the benefits your club can offer volunteers. Doing so will help your club attract volunteers and give you a clear understanding of their needs.

To best ‘sell’ what your club can offer volunteers, ask your current volunteers how they have benefited from their experience. Then use this information to promote volunteering in your club.

Potential benefits of volunteering for a club:

  • parents and children spend time together
  • make new friends and have fun
  • access to free training and resources
  • learn and share new skills
  • increase knowledge and improve skills
  • make a contribution
  • opportunities for travel
  • take on new challenges
  • explore a career
  • earn academic credit
  • expand personal experiences
  • set a good example for kids
  • help reduce costs for members
  • become part of a community and/or be a part of a team
  • maintain fitness
  • opportunities for recognition
  • re-live childhood sporting memories.

How to use this information to attract new volunteers:

  • Promote benefits in flyers and websites, which the Volunteer Coordinator can refer to when talking to potential volunteers.
  • Promote benefits in advertisements for volunteering opportunities.
  • Produce a brochure listing the benefits of volunteering for your club.
  • Write media articles highlighting the benefits of volunteering in your club.
  • Post YouTube clips of existing members talking about the benefits of volunteering in your club (put on your website, Facebook, etc.).

Add to Action Plan

Ask members what they think the benefits of volunteering are at your club.

Confirm club volunteer benefits with the committee.

Determine ways to use these benefits to attract more volunteers.

Benefits of Volunteering at Our Club

Member responses to the question: Why do you like being a volunteer at this club?

Benefits of Volunteering in our club
Make new friends
Give back to my sport
Lighten everyone’s load
Great social atmosphere
Love helping the kids
Strategies For The Promotion Of Volunteering Benefits
Design flyer for inclusion in welcome pack for new members. / Have the responses laminated and hung on wall.
Design and take promotional flyer to local RSL and senior citizens clubs.
Include in all promotional material.

Attracting Volunteers

Social Media

There’s a good reason everyone’s talking about Social Media. The “Social” aspect means this is an easy way to keep in touch with members and staff for your club.

What are the options?

One of the best ways to tap Social Media is to create a free Facebook group for your club, then invite all your members and staff to join it and use it to make announcements, called ‘posts’, and receive ‘comments’ back.Facebook is one of the easier, more popular mediums to cover all age ranges in your club.

In addition to Facebook, some keen clubs might have a Twitter account run by volunteers to send reminders and help their teenage and younger members feel connected.

Pinterest and Instagram are popular if your club has photos of club activity to share. Instagram is particularly popular among younger people.

YouTube is popular for sharing amateur or professional videos of club activity.
“Google Plus” is a new variation of Facebook. In 2013 more of your club members are likely to be found on Facebook, however this may change in years to come. Google Plus is an option to add if you want the strongest club presence in all social media platforms.

How much time is required?

Social Media can be very time consuming. Ideally you might have trusted volunteers appointed to manage your social media, but with you as an ‘admin’, so you have control if and when you need it.

Social Media is a busy, instant, public forum. Everything happens now!
Whoever is managing your social media will need to keep your posts fresh and relevant and constantly monitor to support positive comments and take action to nip any negative problems in the bud – potentially at odd times during the week. Like a good Public Relations (PR) person, they will also need to respond carefully and positively to questions and direct messages. You might consider having one volunteer to manage most of the posts and another mature, experienced volunteer to respond to challenging queries as they arise.

The more social platforms you open up, the more time will be needed to manage them all.

If limited time is available across your volunteer team, then Facebook alone might be your best strategy.

When you have resources to go beyond this, your volunteers might consider the other options above such as Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest and Google Plus.

The next sections focus on Facebook as the core of your social media strategy.

Open versus Closed Facebook ‘Groups’
Before you create a group on Facebook for your club, it is helpful to understand the difference between ‘Open’ and ‘Closed’ groups.

When you or any group member ‘Posts’ an announcement, ‘Likes’ something or makes a ‘Comment’ on your group page, that activity will be seen by everyone else in the group. With a ‘Closed’ group, that is all that happens – only the group members can see the activity.
With an ‘Open’ group, all of the friends connected to each group member can also see the group’s activity, announcements etc.Open groups are your best choice if you will use Facebook to Find and Induct Volunteers and to make general announcements. The Open nature means many more people are likely to see your announcements and take interest in the club.

Closed groups are best if you want to share partially sensitive information only with club staff or members, or if you want to provide a safer ‘members only’ forum for club members to discuss topics without prying eyes.A good strategy might be to create an Open group to advertise your club and then use direct email to keep in touch with volunteers and members for private information.

Social Media is not always safe with sensitive information
Whether you create an Open or Closed group, be aware Facebook reserves the right to change rules without warning. In addition you or club members might accidently share private information wider than you intend to, if unfamiliar with the various privacy settings throughout Facebook. In addition, sometimes unauthorised people can access an account that is not theirs if someone uses a password that is too easy to guess or they forget to logout on a computer shared by others.
For these reasons it is good practice to use Social Media mostly to promote your open, public information and use more secure means for private information. When information is particularly sensitive, a phone call or private face-to-face chat can be the safest and most thoughtful way to discuss it.

How to create a Facebook group

Facebook has instructions on creating a group at

Find Them

Under ‘Open versus Closed Facebook Groups’ above we have highlighted that the posts in an Open Facebook group can be seen not just by your existing club members, but also by all the Facebook friends of your club members. If you have 100 members in your Facebook group and they each have 100 Facebook friends, this means your announcements might be seen by up to 10,000 people.The friends of existing club members can be ideal candidates to become volunteers.

The following actions will help you draw them in;
1. Create your open Facebook group for your club
2. Invite all your club members to join it so you have lots of ‘connections’ in Facebook (see to Invite club members)
3. At regular intervals post vibrant comments and photos of club activity so that onlookers will be interested in your club. Short posts once or twice per week can be a good balance so people don’t forget you but also don’t feel you have too many posts to annoy them (spam).
4. Every so often post an announcement that your club is looking for certain volunteers and how rewarding it can be.
5. Encourage your club members to ‘Like’, ‘Comment’ on and ‘Share’ your volunteer announcements because this makes those announcements much more visible to others.

The more popular your posts or photos are, the more likely Facebook will put them at the top of the ‘news feed’ of the friends that are directly or indirectly connected to your group.

When posting, if you don’t have a public phone number for your club, you can direct people to ‘message’ your group with their own contact details if interested. In this way you keep your personal email address or phone number private. When receiving enquiries you can look at their Facebook wall and their Facebook friends to get a sense of who they are, and who they might know prior to contacting them.