With the arrival of the Phelpsian achievement, swimming will be extra huge this summer as thousands of new kids join in the sport, learn their basic strokes and start competing against their best times.
But unlike many wonderful activities of parenting, like public school, just dropping off and picking up is not an option. Swim meets are like county fairs with speedos -- so many activities, so many starts and stops, so many little pods of children that need to be sheparded throughout the event that swim teams and meets require parents to fulfill many critical roles. Swim team parents and swim team volunteers must fill spots as races timer, age group parents, even people to manage the snack bar. Often times it's not just at meets that huge crews of parent volunteers are needed, but during practices as well.
One veteran parent talked about the herculean volunteer coordination task at her swim club. "Some years there is a parents committee that tasks out management and staffing of each activity to one parent coordinator who arranges volunteers for each task. And they all sort of keep an eye out to make sure that all the parents pull their weight and work a fair number of meets -- usually 5 out of 7 in the season. But some years, the parents committee doesn't coordinate the volunteers and half of us end up working like crazy the whole season and half just sort of hide out and hope no one notices them!!"
VolunteerSpot salutes the incredible work of these parents and the hard work of the parent coordinators who work so tirelessly to try to get everyone where they need to be. Just a question though -- would it be okay if it were like 10 (maybe 20) times easier? Thought so, just look at what VolunteerSpot can do for your club this season (for FREE):
- Easily set up meet calendars, establish all the jobs and number of volunteers needed.
- Once one meet and all its volunteer jobs are set up, this can be copied for all the other meet dates in the season -- simply change the meet name and location all the jobs copy over with a simple point and click copy function.
- Put in the email addresses of all the team parents (once you do this, you can send email updates to them all season) and ask them to choose a minimum number of shifts
- Parents receive email, click in to your calendar, and start choosing their shifts.
- Coordinators can easily check to see whether parents have signed up for shifts or not and can then bug only those parents who are slacking!! or send a special thank you to those who have already picked up shifts!! or any other communication.
- 2 days before the meet, VolunteerSpot automatically emails everyone to remind them of their assignment.
- Coordinators can print out an assignment list from VolunteerSpot to have hard copies on hand at the meet to remind everyone who's handling what that day.
Here at VolunteerSpot we are watching the icicles and shivering in our coats today and we can't wait for summer. Here's to a great swim season and to teams all over making their volunteering easier with VolunteerSpot.
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