Building a Sustainable Club: Distributing the Load So No One Burns Out

"We just need more volunteers." It's the refrain heard at committee meetings across the country. If only more people would help, the reasoning goes, the workload would be manageable.

But here's the uncomfortable truth: adding more volunteers to a broken system just creates more people to burn out. Before you can distribute the load, you need to reduce it.

The Myth of More Hands

Imagine a bucket with a hole in the bottom. You can keep adding water, but you'll never fill it. You can recruit more people to pour, but the fundamental problem remains.

Many clubs operate the same way. They have processes that leak time: manual tasks that could be automated, communication patterns that create unnecessary work, systems that require constant maintenance. Adding more volunteers might slow the drain, but it doesn't fix it.

Worse, each new volunteer needs to be trained and coordinated. If your systems are complex and undocumented, bringing someone new up to speed can actually increase the workload for existing volunteers in the short term.

Reduce Before You Redistribute

Before asking "who else can help?", ask "do we need to do this at all?"

Audit your club's administrative tasks. For each one, ask: Is this actually necessary? Could technology handle it instead? Could we change our processes to eliminate it? Is there a simpler way to achieve the same outcome?

You'll likely find that significant time goes into tasks that exist only because of outdated systems. Manual schedule distribution that could be replaced by a shared link. Spreadsheet maintenance that proper software would eliminate. Communication overhead caused by information being hard to access.

Reducing these tasks means there's less total work to distribute. The remaining work can be shared among volunteers without anyone becoming overwhelmed.

Designing for Delegation

Once you've reduced the overall burden, you can think about distribution. But this requires systems that support delegation — not ones that resist it.

Ask yourself: Could someone new take over this task with minimal training? Is the information they need accessible, or locked in someone's head? Are there clear boundaries around the responsibility? Can multiple people work on this without stepping on each other's toes?

If the answer to these questions is "no," you don't have a volunteer shortage — you have a systems problem. Fix the systems first.

The Role of Technology

Modern tools can transform how work is distributed in a club. Instead of one person being the gatekeeper for all scheduling information, a proper system gives appropriate access to everyone who needs it.

Coaches can check availability themselves. Team managers can view their own allocations. Parents can access schedules without messaging anyone. The volunteer coordinator becomes a manager of the system rather than the sole conduit for all information.

This isn't about replacing volunteers with software. It's about freeing volunteers from tasks that software handles better, so they can focus on the human elements that actually require human judgment.

Creating Sustainable Roles

With reduced and redistributed workloads, you can design volunteer roles that are actually sustainable.

A sustainable role has clear boundaries — specific responsibilities that don't expand indefinitely. It has reasonable time expectations — a few hours per week, not a part-time job. It has support systems — documentation, tools, and people to ask for help. And it has an exit path — the ability to hand over to someone else without months of transition.

When roles are sustainable, volunteers stay longer. They recommend the experience to friends. They leave on good terms and sometimes return. The constant churn of burned-out volunteers slows, then stops.

The Long-Term View

Building a sustainable club requires investment — in systems, in tools, in process improvement. It's tempting to defer this investment, to limp along with the current approach because it technically works.

But the cost of volunteer burnout compounds over time. Each departure takes knowledge with it. Each replacement requires training. Each near-miss with a system failure erodes confidence.

Clubs that invest in sustainability now will thrive in the future. They'll attract and retain volunteers. They'll operate smoothly regardless of who holds which role. They'll focus on growing the game rather than just keeping the lights on.

The choice is yours: keep filling the leaky bucket, or fix the hole.