Getting parents to volunteer

[Macey78]

I'm a parent rep for the team my daughter plays football on. On match days we need parents to volunteer to act as lines person and at home matches to help set up.

On the group what's app no one ever volunteers for this or help set up. There are 1 or 2 parents who accidentally arrive early on match days and if they see there's Help needed with setting up will do this.

I need to say in a nice but firm way that as parents of your players you need to support the team by helping set up and acting as lines person. My husband has done this quite a few times. When I've spoken to other parent reps they have said they don't seem to have a problem there's always someone ready to volunteer for lines-person and help with setting up at a home game. Any advice with wording greatly appreciated.

@user512

Our club try this but they can piss right off. I pay £20 a month for training and £30 a year for his passport, I take him every week to training in the week and spend 2 cold hours on a Sunday watching the warm up and match. I don't give a flying fuck about football, I have no interest in learning the offside rule, I know enough to support my son in his interest without needing to be pressured into a voluntary role I want nothing to do with. It's completely unreasonable to expect parents to do that if they don't want to.

Very strong opinion that you don't see why you should help but yet you think it's totally reasonable for other parents to provide all that for free for you with no support? The £20 a month will barely cover the running costs. The volunteers are giving hours of their time to your child for free. They must love you with that attitude towards them

Do people thing "paid" activities like brownies or cubs have paid staff at a local level? This thread is staggeringly sad and depressing...

Maybe they don't as scouts / Cubs brownies are cheaper as venue hire is often cheaper as is insurance etc
You always have to buy uniform on top whereas in football it's the norm to include kit in subs fee / sponsored.
But most sports exc swim lessons are volunteer led

Actually tennis / squash is often paid coaches but more like £10 a lesson not a month?

Bring a sheet with dates of training on it, when parents dropping off children ask them to put name down on one slots to be patient supervisor/ helper. Then each week day before send out a reminder to person who name down on list. I usually get them to list child name.

There are a few sports in our area that are predominantly delivered by paid coaches, mainly martial arts. But the costs are much greater than community clubs - not surprisingly really as those coaches are trying to earn a living from their sport, in much the same way as many dance, music and academic tutors. I don't know of any team sports where that's the model though, which is just as well or they would be out of reach of many families.

In our area there are some things that you can pay & play per session which are £5-25 an hour by paid coaches. But they are just for one hour. Nothing else. No matches etc Team sports with matches are all volunteers with very few exceptions

I do think there's a clear distinction between professionally run clubs like judo say where you pay a coach to teach your child and a football or rugby team where you are paying for hall hire/ membership/ insurance etc and the people who run it are volunteers. Often it's someone mum or dad - and quite often they are also paying to be a member as well! I fail to see how hard it is to do a job once in a while like setting goal posts up/ wash the kit/ help do some fundraising etc whatever - I've made lots of friends via this sort of thing and it helps keeps the costs down and shows your appreciation for the main coach/ leader!
Maybe it does need to made more clear what is run by volunteers and what's not? Though I do think it's always fairly obvious.

Yes it's a shame when often these clubs are community run and gives Dc whose parents are on lower income a chance to participate.
e.g. Brownies

But why should people want to help out if some parents are so entitled and unappreciative

I think the clue is in the name. If it's a club it's almost certainly volunteer run. Even then I suspect most people have no idea how much work it takes to run it, way, way more than just what you see when dropping off.

@BungleandGeorge

What does the £25 a month cover? Maybe just increase it by a few pounds a week and pay someone to help out?

Normally pitch hire, equipment, affiliations fees, league fees, training courses for volunteers, DBS checks, ref fees, insurance and often kits. There's also not many qualified coaches who will rock up to do just one hour of coaching for £10 if they have no child there, as once you add in travel, it's not worth it for them. The paid coaches generally run own coaching businesses & charge much more . Clubs will often pay £150-200 for a parent to do coaching course but they can't then pay wage on top and aren't set up to do so.

I would like op to clarify the amount of volunteer time she needs , I'm at many many a football match , set up and put away takes very little time if everyone chips in . Ask players to arrive X amount of time before the match , to need linesman they are an u11 or older , old enough to move a goal , put a flag in the ground .
Make it clear the TEAM/ parents need to have the pitch ready for the match

Maybe look at a range of fees? Being a coach or linesman at x number of matches a season free place for your child, volunteering to help set up/put away at least 50% of matches then £15 a month, not prepared/able to do any voluntary work then £50 a month.

I suspect alot will be much more interested in helping out.

@Qwertykeys

I would like op to clarify the amount of volunteer time she needs , I'm at many many a football match , set up and put away takes very little time if everyone chips in . Ask players to arrive X amount of time before the match , to need linesman they are an u11 or older , old enough to move a goal , put a flag in the ground . Make it clear the TEAM/ parents need to have the pitch ready for the match

Asking the team to do it just puts more work on the volunteer coaches, prior to a match the coaches should be warming up the kids and giving them a team talk. The need for volunteers is to do the pitch check/set up while the coaches do their roles, the problem is some parents will just drop and run even earlier.

@Babababababybelll

At £25 a month , i would assume £5 per hour session, that this should be staffed.

I do help out with my daughters grass roots football , however, its manned entirely by volunteers and costs £8 per month. (£2 per 1 hour lesson max. )

How would 2 training sessions a week and 4 matches add up to 5 hrs? Maybe 5 hrs a week but there are 4 and a bit weeks in a month.

Definitely YANBU. My Dad managed my team (volunteer) and people would hardly ever help set up goals so it would be the two of us arriving half an hour early every week. Then we had the same problem with getting someone to do the flag. If there are 15 players in the squad most parents would only have to do it once if everyone helped. And it's not hard at grass roots level the linesman doesn't usually have to do offsides so you literally point the flag in the direction of the team that didn't kick the ball out.

Timely article in today's times:

I ran my son’s football club: the parents are trickier than the kids

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cc4e515a-35a2-11ec-8ef4-8e6db1a4b82a?shareToken=14edf4cf3d42531a4c44f0d147315f9c

Interesting. Tbh Im a female coach and mostly but not always the only one there at leagues and tournaments but ive never had that level of sexism.
We need more females to volunteer to make it more normal. Then more would follow ...

The parents are trickier than the kids is true everywhere - I used to be a secondary school teacher. Kids were fine, even the difficult ones. Obviously lots of parents were either never heard from, fine, or positively lovely, but the difficult parents were much trickier than the kids. The real problem was a specific type of bantom cockerel male colleague with aspirations to be a head though

There are two options -

• helping out on a rota basis is a condition of child being a member of the club

• everyone pays more to cover the cost of paying someone to do it as a job

Third option could be combination of the two - those who would rather just pay more do so and those happy to help don't pay.

It's interesting that referees in football are paid. Athletics officials are not, they are all volunteers, even the top-ranked ones do it for the love of it, eg at the Commonwealth Games next year they will not be paid. Mind you, football referees need danger money.

Some parents will not help because they help at other things. For example, I didn't help at cubs (except once) because I was a school governor. I don't volunteer at parkrun very often because I am an athletics official so I will run parkrun and then go off to my local athletics track to do 6 hours of time-keeping.

So before you call everyone lazy and entitled, consider whether they are contributing to the community in other ways. Yes some will be lazy and entitled, but most are not. Also some people just don't want to deal with other peoples' kids. Yes it's good that we don't all feel that way but you could say that about anything that is to do with people - eg it's good that not everyone is squeamish about blood, or wiping an elderly person's bottom or we wouldn't have any nurses/care workers.

However, in football you can have a rota to help set up goals. I think when my son played the coaches acted as linesmen but I can't really remember now.

Football refs are paid yes and it's not an easy job.. harder the older the kids are. But I'm involved in other sports where non parent refs (or competition officials) are paid too. Not much but some cash. It's more to cover expenses & give an incentive to do it. Paying it as expenses is easier than becoming an employer etc

Just wondering if op is now sorted with a rota

We re in scouts and I m a leader.
There's only the min leaders for the section at the moment and we do our Wednesday night every week and a hike once a month. (Camps can't go ahead covid)
We normally just keep going but parents are complaining that we should be out every weekend and the usual session.
They re more demanding because of covid. We ve asked for parents to join and they actually said not a hope..
I m doing it 10 years and I m quite tired now. Esp as my kids are in older sections and I help out with their sections if needed.
Like doing it but its almost like we re being difficult if the darlings aren't occupied every weekend and mid week.
I laughed last week...jonny missed the hike ..can you arrange for him to go on it as a catch up?...I choked on my tea

@Halfwreckedbykids

We used to help out on a rota

Surely the parents should take a running jump and you should do what you can do but if they won't help then it's too bad if you are not out every weekend, very cheeky of them.