Why Your Club's Best Volunteers Keep Quitting (And How to Stop It)

Every soccer club has experienced it. That dedicated volunteer — the one who seemed to run everything effortlessly — suddenly announces they're stepping back. Within weeks, the cracks start to show. Schedules fall apart, emails go unanswered, and everyone wonders how one person was holding so much together.

The truth is, they weren't doing it effortlessly. They were drowning.

The Hidden Workload

Club volunteers rarely talk about how much time they actually spend on admin. There's an unspoken expectation that running a community sports club should be simple — after all, it's just scheduling some training sessions and games, right?

But the reality is far more complex. A typical week for a volunteer coordinator might include responding to dozens of messages from coaches asking about pitch availability, manually updating spreadsheets when allocations change, fielding complaints about double-bookings, coordinating with council or facility managers, communicating schedule changes to parents across multiple teams, and trying to find fair solutions when everyone wants the same prime-time slots.

This work is invisible. Committee members see the end result — a schedule that mostly works — without understanding the hours of late-night spreadsheet wrangling that went into it.

The Breaking Point

Volunteer burnout doesn't happen overnight. It's a gradual accumulation of small frustrations that eventually become unbearable.

It starts with the 11pm phone call about a scheduling conflict. Then it's the Sunday morning spent fixing a spreadsheet error instead of watching your own child play. Eventually, the volunteer realises they're spending more time managing the club than enjoying being part of it.

The final straw is often surprisingly small — a curt email from a parent, a committee member questioning their decisions, or simply the exhaustion of another season looming. They announce their resignation, and suddenly the club is scrambling.

What Actually Helps

The solution isn't just finding more volunteers to share the load — though that helps. The real solution is reducing the total amount of work that needs to be done.

Modern facility management tools can automate many of the tasks that consume volunteer time. Conflict detection catches double-bookings before they become problems. Self-service schedule viewing means fewer "what time is training?" messages. Centralised systems mean changes only need to be made once, not across multiple spreadsheets and group chats.

When the administrative burden drops, volunteering becomes sustainable again. People can contribute without sacrificing their weeknights and weekends. The work gets done without anyone becoming a martyr.

Protecting Your Volunteers

If your club relies on one or two people to keep everything running, you're one resignation away from crisis. The time to act is before your best volunteers burn out — not after.

Start by understanding how much time your key volunteers actually spend on admin. Ask them directly, and be prepared for the answer to be higher than you expect. Then look honestly at which tasks could be simplified, automated, or eliminated entirely.

Your volunteers give their time because they love the club and the sport. The least you can do is make sure that time is spent on meaningful work, not fighting with spreadsheets at midnight.