It's very likely that your Constitution establishes several office-bearers to take charge of running your club for a year or more. Typically, these will have names such as chairperson, secretary, treasurer, and may also extend to junior section leader, coach, publicity officer, child protection officer, or indeed any of many other roles depending on the size and nature of your club. This section offers advice and template materials for working with the people in your club who take on various roles and responsibilities. People are the life-blood of your club: their contribution ensures success - and lots of sport and recreation gets enjoyed. Good people need nurturing. If you look after them, they will remain committed and make a valuable contribution to your sport.
The Three R's
There are three golden rules in managing the people in your club:
- RECRUIT the right people for the right job
- RETAIN them by providing good support in the form of role desciptions, briefs and training
- REWARD what they are doing through appropriate acknowledgement and 'perks' (which will rarely be financial!)
The three key roles
There are three excellent booklets in the Running Sport series all listed in the accompanying Resources side panel which you can download, setting out the roles of the key officers - the Chairperson, the Secretary and the Treasurer.
Role descriptions
For each elected officer, it's useful to create a simple role description so that the post-holder (or candidates standing for election) can be briefed about what they are undertaking. Perhaps no more than one side of A4, you might want to consider detailing:
- Who the role accounts to
- Who the role is responsible for
- The main duties of the role
- The budget that the post-holder is responsible for
- The expected commitment in terms of the number of meetings or hours to fulfill the role
- The minimum/maximum length of service in the role
In the Resource side panel, you'll find some template role descriptions for each of:
- Chairperson
- Treasurer
- Publicity Officer
- Volunteer Coordinator
- Child Protection Officer
