Fans/members skills list

[Spoonz Red E]

Meanwhile this 'joke of a club' seems to get somethings right.

https://www.exetercityfc.co.uk/news/2019/may/volunteer-invitation/

"It is estimated that nearly 200 people have volunteered for the club and Supporters' Trust last season.
It is estimated around 25,000 hours have been freely given with an estimated value of £250,000."

(Although as Red Bill suggests it is always worth trying to improve things and learning from what goes wrong)

 

[Dannyred]

Meanwhile this 'joke of a club' seems to get somethings right.

https://www.exetercityfc.co.uk/news/2019/may/volunteer-invitation/

"It is estimated that nearly 200 people have volunteered for the club and Supporters' Trust last season.
It is estimated around 25,000 hours have been freely given with an estimated value of £250,000."

(Although as Red Bill suggests it is always worth trying to improve things and learning from what goes wrong)

So 200 people give there valued time for free saving the club. £250,000 (amazing) and as someone said the chairman gets an extra £20,000 more than the year before.

 

[Spoonz Red E]

So 200 people give there valued time for free saving the club. £250,000 (amazing) and as someone said the chairman gets an extra £20,000 more than the year before.

I do think it is amazing actually, yes. And if you think £250,000 pounds worth of effort is derisory ... well.

 

[Antony Moxey]

When I volunteered it was worth a lot more than £10 an hour (seriously), so I reckon that £250k might be a bit light.

 

[Spoonz Red E]

When I volunteered it was worth a lot more than £10 an hour (seriously), so I reckon that £250k might be a bit light.

I think it averages down due to the small amount of voluntary time I offer

 

[Antony Moxey]

That’s definitely worth more than £10ph!

 

[Andy Holloway]

To successfully run a 'fan/members skills list' you first need a central point of contact within ECFC to co-ordinate these skills and call upon them as and when needed. Just to say, for instance, "i'm an electrician and have offered to do work for ECFC but have not been contacted", is a bit pointless if the club do not need any electrical work carried out or, that any work carried out at SJP would need the appropriate certification and legal sign-off.
The Stadium Manager is also the Head Groundsman who has many, many responsibilities already without trying to remember who offered/volunteered to sort this or that out, even before he tries to get in touch with them.

There are many, many volunteers who already do a huge amount of unpaid work for the club, from general maintenance tasks around SJP, to clearing and sorting the rubbish post matches, from weeding the outer areas of SJP, to printing and dispatching tickets for high profile matches.

Should anybody not have any particular skills or, possibly not have that much spare time, then there is always the post match clear up teams, who pick up the rubbish around the ground directly after home matches thereby releasing the ground staff to get on with what they are paid and qualified for, maintaining the pitch. Every body who attends home matches could contribute to the volunteer ethos of ECFC just by not dropping their sweetie wrappers, or their crisp packet or their Fanta bottle. You are still allowed to drop your loose change, on the BB though, that does get 're-cycled' through the 'Brush Fund'!
The trouble is that some people feel that tasks like, picking up litter around SJP, are 'below them' and it's always 'somebody else's' job!

Part of the reason that the annual/bi-annual/tri-annual work parties have not been operating recently is, because there is no-one to organise and co-ordinate them anymore, the last one was a couple of years ago.

Drop into SJP any week day, and there will almost always be some volunteers in there doing this and that, which saves the club serious amounts of money. Spoonz quoted £250k, which as Ant says is possibly a bit on the low side, but none the less not a sum to be sniffed at.
I wonder how much similar volunteer work at Sandy Park equates to.
So Danny we're looking forward to you joining the volunteers in and around SJP in the up coming weeks to bring your expertise to the party!!

 

[Red Bill]

There you go bill, you came on the thread to have a dig yet you didn’t reply to the DM, you are like many have said the club are like, make contact yet get no reply.

I don’t think you can make any changes but wish you luck

I had no idea why you sent the DM, it was nothing private just more of the same drivel you're writing on here. It didnt answer the questions I asked you about your experiences of offering help, which just makes me think you've made it up. You certainly aren't trying to help anyway.

 

[Ash]

Dannyred for CEO.

Seconded! Now if only we could work out wtf he could be the CEO of......

 

[andrew p long]

Bill

I was going to make some comments but fortunately Andy Holloway has now effectively made the points ( far better than I could, not least because he has the experience of volunteering that I don’t).

I think that in volunteering it is more important to be flexible adaptable willing and available than to have a specific expertise. Accordingly having a list of people who might ( or might not) be willing to work on some narrow task,in some undefined way, is looking for volunteers ‘through the wrong end of the telescope’.

Experience of successful volunteering bears this out. Chris Sumner didn’t have any experience, so far as I know , of running around in a lion costume 13 years ago. Antony Moxey wrote match reports for the club when his professional expertise was not in journalism/reporting. The volunteer team that sells tickets for big games generally didn’t previously work in call centres. The programme sellers don’t generally come from a retail background. The people who serve tea at U18s games aren’t caterers. Neither are those who cook midday meals at the Cat and Fiddle.Dacre Holloway didn’t sign up to a list and wait to be contacted before undertaking numerous diverse tasks. The people who tidy up after games don’t have day jobs as refuse collectors. The work parties use people with diverse skills, some are handy at painting , others aren’t. The list could go on. Somehow however they have all managed to contribute in ways that those ‘waiting to be contacted’ haven’t.

Conversely as Andy points out the list can be counter productive. This happened with me . There was one occasion when I was contacted because those wrestling with a tricky problem thought my work experience might be useful. It might have been, but various logistical issues (geography, timing,availability), together with issues of the precise specialism, ultimately put paid to the idea. The end result was that having to contact me turned out to be an unhelpful delay and diversion. The list can be one more hoop for existing volunteers to jump through.

So that’s the negative about a list. The positive suggestion is the converse. To have an accessible list somewhere on what voluntary tasks need doing, the skills/experience/training needed, and how to volunteer for them and when . To be updated as necessary - For example when new recruits are being trained in telephone ticket sales. The thrust of this list would be to enable people to contribute by their own initiative, rather than a list where the onus is on existing volunteers to chase round. ( it wouldn’t at all surprise me if such a thing already existed, but plainly if it does many seem unable to find it)