Show description

Amongst Australian sport volunteers the most frequently cited reasons for volunteering are personal or family involvement, personal satisfaction and to help others or the community (ABS, 2001b). In order of frequency, Canadian sport volunteers list their motivations as to help a cause in which they believe, use skills to help an organization’s cause or because someone they know such as a child or an adult partner is affected by the organization or its activities (Doherty, 2005). Using a focus group approach the LIRC (2003) identified social benefits, giving something back and parental involvement with their own children as the most frequently cited attractions for sport volunteering.

The response depends upon how sport volunteering is conceptualized and measured. In this chapter, research on volunteer work has been analysed from several perspectives. These include total numbers of volunteers, rates of volunteer participation, hours contributed in total and per volunteer (mean and median values), years contributed by volunteers and the number of organizations and roles in which volunteers participate. Statistics from two volunteer work reports provided by the ABS (1996 and 2001b) may provide some insights to the complexity of this matter.

Volunteer coordinators are responsible for developing systems and procedures to manage volunteers such as planning, recruitment, training and recognition and reward schemes. These roles are discussed in more detail in Chapter 8. Officials The majority of individual sports officials (referees, umpires, judges, scorers or timekeepers) are unpaid. Some sports such as football (soccer), Australian Rules Football, basketball, cricket and other football codes pay officials at all levels, enabling a small minority at the elite level to earn a living as full-time professional officials.