Volunteers, Coaches & Referees
Finding, welcoming, and keeping the people who make your club run, the most common gap clubs tell us about, and the hardest to fix alone.
Message templates, an onboarding checklist, and how to recruit parents, juniors, and coaches; and more.
Recruiting and retaining referees
Umpiring often gets overlooked as a volunteer pathway, but the same principles that work for coaches and volunteers apply here too: ask specific people directly, start with a low-commitment entry point, and treat current players and parents as your first talent pool, not just spectators.
For accreditation, courses, and everything else referee-specific, click HERE.
Useful links:
| UNDER 1 HOUR - NO TRAINING
Score table · Match photos · Setup/pack-down · Canteen shift |
|
ONGOING BUT FLEXIBLE
Stats tracking · Social content · Newsletter · Uniform coordination |
|
HIGHER COMMITMENT
Team manager · Committee roles · Coaching support |
Not every ask is the same. A club volunteer signs up for a season, an event volunteer signs up for a day. Treat them differently and you'll get more of both.
| Club volunteers | Event volunteers |
| Ask once, season-length, proper onboarding, regular recognition. |
Ask close to the date, small and specific, a 5-minute briefing is enough. |
Every club needs policies covering things like codes of conduct, team selections and inclusion but writing them from a blank page is a big ask for volunteer committees.
Play by the Rules has done the heavy lifting for you, with free, editable templates for topics like diversity, equity and inclusion, team selections and codes of behaviour for people in key club or association roles.
Adapt them to fit your club, share them with your members once approved, and tick off a governance essential in an afternoon, not a term.