Benefits from Volunteering
Volunteering has benefits for three different sets of people: the volunteers themselves, the organisations they help, and the communities they volunteer in.Individual club volunteers
For individual club volunteers, it is the 'social benefits' that people get from volunteering that are dominant, with the related concept of 'enjoyment' being the second most cited benefit. These top two benefits for individual volunteers are important to acknowledge in the context of increasing pressures on volunteers in sports organisations to 'perform' more professionally in their voluntary roles.Greater efficiency in voluntary sports organisations should not threaten the primary motivations of the core volunteers running most of these organisations.
Another worry here is that players are showing less and less respect for officials and the enjoyment is going out of refereeing, umpiring and judging. One hockey club commented "umpiring is a very unloved position and over the last three years it has got a lot worse...umpires don't get the camaraderie, no one talks to them afterwards
Enjoyment is closely followed by a set of satisfactions that are more altruistic in nature, including satisfaction from 'giving something back' (a common phrase used by volunteers which we have mentioned earlier), from helping the club do well and from keeping the club going. As noted above, these satisfactions may be more compatible with developments in the efficiency of voluntary organisations, but they also interact with the social and enjoyment benefits. People very seldom "volunteer" for any one reason alone.
For young people the benefits from volunteering differ in two key respects from adult volunteers. First, young people are much more likely to acknowledge the functional benefit of volunteering to their CVs and qualifications. Second, volunteering can help young people gain a degree of empowerment and recognition.
Benefits to Clubs
The benefits of volunteering to their clubs perceived by both adult volunteers and young people are very straightforward. The main response emphasises the obvious but important point that without volunteers, clubs would not exist. Some focus groups perceptively linked volunteering with participation, either through the lower costs that translate to reasonable membership fees, or through the attraction of young people to a club that had young volunteers.Benefits to the local community
The benefits to the local community most commonly cited by club volunteers are similar to those claimed to represent the value of sport to society as a whole. Most commonly mentioned was the obvious, but again important point that without volunteers there would not be so many opportunities for people to participate in sport. The opportunities for young people to participate were felt to be particularly important to local communities, and this is often connected with the second most commonly cited benefit: that of keeping kids off the streets.Given the recent health concerns about inactive children, it is perhaps no surprise that the health benefits afforded to communities by sports participation in voluntary clubs also comes high on the list. This can be couched as of most relevance to a focus on young people, but it also impacts favourably on all ages. Another perceived benefit is that volunteers are seen as custodians of sports facilities for future participants.
From a different source, the survey of Local Authority officers revealed benefits to their communities from volunteers in sport similar to those identified by the clubs themselves.
The most common response by far (38 out of 50 authorities) is that they are the main providers of sporting opportunities to their communities. As one Local Authority officer put it, "take away the volunteers, take away half the sport". Forty of the 50 local authority officers interviewed worked in sports development and a measure of their dependence on working with voluntary clubs was their views on the volunteers involved with them.
Such phrases as "'invaluable"', "without them all the activities we do would fail", "without them we wouldn't survive, there wouldn't be any provision" speak volumes for the value of volunteers to sport in our wider communities.
Personal Development Opportunities
Volunteering can often lead to new and exciting experiences for people of all ages to take advantage of. One such opportunity is the prospect of travel during your volunteer placement. Groups such as the Travellers Worldwide Sports Volunteers offer keen participants the chance to travel to some of the most remote parts of the world in order to take part in volunteer work including sports coaching. The chance to coach most sports is there including footbll cricket, swimming, athletics etc.
Combining travel with volunteering in some of the poorest nations in the world is sure to be a vastly rewarding experience which will benefit you as well as those who your contribution will aid.
A Guide for Sport Volunteer Cooordinators & Managers