Football Club Volunteer Recruitment: Fill the Roles That Keep a Club Running
99% of UK grassroots football clubs are volunteer-run and most have at least one role nobody has stepped into. This is how you recruit, onboard and keep the people a club actually needs.
The gap nobody talks about
Every club has a plan for players.
Very few have a plan for volunteers.
The FORZA 2026 State of Grassroots Football survey of 409 UK clubs found 99% are volunteer-run, 58% spend £250 or more a week running, and 30% depend on personal contributions from volunteers and officials to keep going.
That is not a funding problem.
That is a people problem wearing a funding problem's coat.
A club with twelve age groups and one secretary is not underfunded.
It is one resignation away from stopping.
This page is about fixing that before it happens.
What a club actually needs
Most clubs need between eight and ten roles filled by separate people.
The list is shorter than people think and longer than anyone admits.
- Chair: sets direction, chairs the AGM, holds the line when things get tense.
- Secretary: the hub. Minutes, correspondence, affiliation, league liaison. This is the role that breaks clubs.
- Treasurer: banking, invoices, subs, grants, year-end accounts.
- Welfare officer: safeguarding, DBS, first aid, the person parents ring when something is wrong.
- First aider: pitch-side cover every matchday and training night.
- Kit manager: wash, repair, issue, chase. The least glamorous job in football and the one everyone notices when it fails.
- Fixture secretary: liaises with the league, books referees, confirms pitches, rearranges the rearranged fixture.
- Referee liaison: the person who answers the referee's email at 10pm on a Friday.
- Social media and content: posts, photos, match reports, sponsor mentions.
- Fundraising and events: the presentation evening, the quiz night, the raffle, the sponsorship drive.
- Volunteer coordinator: the role almost nobody has, and the one that fixes the rest.
The single biggest fix available to most clubs is splitting the secretary role.
One person doing minutes, correspondence, affiliation, league liaison and safeguarding admin is not a secretary.
That is a part-time job nobody applied for.
Split it into secretary, welfare officer and fixture secretary and three people do a third of the work each.
That is the difference between a role that gets filled and a role that sits empty for two seasons.
Why clubs cannot recruit
The reason is not that people do not want to help.
The reason is how the ask is made.
"We need volunteers, please step forward" is not an ask.
It is a prayer.
People do not step forward for a prayer.
They step forward for a specific job, with a clear time commitment, an end date, and a person who will show them how.
Here is what actually works.
- Ask one person for one job. Not "help". A job. "Will you be kit manager for the under-11s, two hours a week, for one season."
- Put it in writing, in the club colours, and send it to parents and players directly. Not a Facebook post. A letter or email to a named person.
- Offer a taster shift before any commitment. One matchday. One training night. Let them see the job before they sign up for it.
- Follow up within a week. People who said maybe need a nudge. People who said no need to be asked again next season, not written off.
- Start in February for an August handover. September is the worst month to recruit because everyone is already drowning. The end of the season is when people reflect on what they enjoyed and what they would do differently.
The clubs that fill roles do these five things.
The clubs that do not, post on Facebook and wonder why nobody replies.
The time commitment, honestly
Most roles are two to four hours a week in season.
There is a spike on matchday and a spike in August and September when affiliation, DBS and kit issue land at once.
Treasurers and secretaries run higher, closer to five or six hours a week at peak.
Be honest about the number when you recruit.
The people who leave are the ones who were told "an hour a week" and found it was six.
That is not a volunteer problem.
That is a recruitment problem with a volunteer-shaped hole in it.
DBS and safeguarding
Anyone working with children or in a position of trust needs an enhanced DBS check through the club's County FA.
The club welfare officer arranges it.
The cost is usually covered by the County FA or a small club fee.
Do not let a volunteer start with children before the check clears.
This is not optional and it is not paperwork for paperwork's sake.
It is the single thing that protects the club, the volunteer and the child, and it takes less time than one training session to get moving.
How to keep volunteers once you have them
Burnout is rarely about the hours.
It is about feeling alone with a job nobody else understands.
Fix that and people stay for years.
- Give them a named handover. Not a pile of papers. A person who shows them the job for two weeks.
- Write a role description. One page. What the job is, what it is not, who they report to, what success looks like.
- Give them a buddy for the first month. Someone who answers the stupid questions so they do not have to guess.
- Remove the friction. Shared logins, a single club inbox, templates for the repeat tasks, a shared drive with the fixtures and the contact list. If the job lives in one person's head, the job dies when that person leaves.
- Say thank you specifically and publicly, at least twice a season. "Thanks to everyone who helped" is not thanks. "Thanks to Sarah for running the kit wash every week since August" is thanks.
The clubs that keep volunteers are not the ones with the most volunteers.
They are the ones where nobody is doing a job alone.
The presentation evening is the recruitment event
If you do one thing this season, do this.
At the end of the season, at the presentation evening, before the awards, ask for next year's volunteers.
Not on a screen. Not on a WhatsApp group. In the room, with the parents in front of you, while the feeling of the season is still warm.
Say what you need, how long it takes, and what support they get.
Then sit down and let the silence do the work.
People volunteer in rooms, not in inboxes.
What AI can take off a volunteer's plate
Most volunteer burnout is not the football.
It is the admin around the football.
The emails, the fixture confirmations, the subs reminders, the sponsor mentions, the match reports, the social posts.
None of that needs a human.
It needs a system.
AI Suite builds the admin layer for UK grassroots clubs: enquiry handling, booking, subs collection, matchday content, sponsor reporting and fixture comms.
The volunteers stay for the football.
The admin runs in the background.
That is the deal.
£149Volunteer Recruitment Pack setup £49/moongoing support £199/moSports Matchday Retainer