to think if they were more organised they might get volunteers

[swg1]

We've got a local little village hall thing - very under-used. A few months ago the committee held a meeting to ask if people wanted to use it. The response was generally very positive, lots of people had ideas. I volunteered to help run a toddler group as I was due to be on maternity leave about a month after the meeting. People asked what next steps were and were told to leave our details and they'd get back to us.

We waited. And waited. I had my baby. We waited a bit more. I did some digging around at one point as my partner has a big birthday coming up and we'd have been interested in renting the hall for that. No-one seemed to have contact details for the committee, including the local council.

It's been 3 months and I got a call tonight from one of the women running it to say was I still interested? Sure! I said excitedly. To start in.. October. 8 months after the original meeting, a few months before I'd be returning from maternity leave facepalm. She'd help, but only would be interested in a certain day. That day unfortunately is a day I absolutely would not be able to arrange so I didn't work when I went back due to childcare.

I'm honestly struggling. I'm interested, but no, not in investing vast amounts of work in something I would not end up benefiting from very shortly afterwards. (And I know how this goes, these things are hard to hand over - I can totally picture being on a train to London and getting a call saying something had gone wrong because I was still "in charge"). If I had longer it might be different but this - hell, I can't even commit because we're still discussing if I'll go back early!

AIBU to be annoyed that the committee is STILL complaining that no-one is prepared to help out because no-one has succeeded in tracking them down to volunteer for anything?

[puppydogmummy]

That would do my head in! Maybe see if the big management committee ( wherever they are?) would let you form sub committees to organise certain things? Sounds complicated but then really a group of you could just get on with it, with maybe one of you reporting back to big meeting? I used to do a lot of voluntary work but have to say got quite disheartened by it all

[Permanentlyexhausted]

Perhaps you need to join the hall committee and organise them. I guess they're volunteers too. There'll be various insurance and public liability issues to deal with that might be holding things up.

[Lucydogz]

I've done several voluntary jobs and each time it's been really difficult to get started. The organisers seem to be very inefficient. Another pain is the amount of former filling required. You have to be really determined to volunteer.

[swg1]

Partner and I did actually volunteer to join the committee and again have heard nothing. I suspect the problem is that the existing committee are so burned out that the work of just passing the work on has become too much for them.