At the end of the season, someone gets thanked.

They are handed a bottle of wine, a round of applause, maybe a club polo or a framed photo. Everyone knows they have done a lot. No one is quite sure how much.

They coached. They opened up. They answered emails. They sorted the gear. They calmed a parent down. They found a referee. They knew who was missing. They stayed late.

If you lead, govern, fund or support community sport, this person is somewhere in your operating model.

The room calls them a volunteer.

Volunteer is a generous word. It is also an elusive one.

It slips between noun, verb and adjective, changing meaning almost without notice.

It can describe the person, the work, and the fact that the work was unpaid. It can name a coach, describe their labour, and imply something about why they said yes.

That ambiguity matters when community sport says it has a shortage of volunteers.

Usually, what it means is a shortage of operating capacity. Not enough coaches. Not enough officials. Not enough people to manage teams, run events, write grants, reconcile accounts or sit through another meeting on a wet Tuesday night.

The work still needs doing.

But "volunteer" is too broad to tell us what is actually short.

Which roles are difficult to fill? What time, skill and continuity do they require? What motivates people to take them on? Why should the work be voluntary at all?

The word is the beginning of the diagnosis, not the end of it.

There is also more at stake than operating capacity.

Sometimes the role does more than serve the club. It also gives something back to the person carrying it.

A parent becomes a helper. A player becomes a coach. A member becomes someone others trust.

That is the tension the word hides. The same role can meet an operating need and deepen a person's willingness to contribute.

A volunteer count can tell leaders how many people are involved. It cannot tell them what work is short, why it should be voluntary, or what the role asks of and gives back to the person carrying it.

The older meaning is still there inside the word: willingness.

A volunteer is not simply unpaid capacity. They must keep choosing to contribute.

The first yes is not the only one that matters.

Volunteering competes with work, family logistics, recreation and countless other claims on people's time. People are giving fewer hours and volunteering in more flexible, episodic ways, while many organisations face growing needs and administrative demands.

Nor is the first yes an agreement to carry whatever work later gathers around the role. Someone may choose to coach a team, officiate a match or help run an event. That does not mean they have agreed to absorb every organisational burden that comes with it.

Leaders cannot manufacture willingness. But they can shape the conditions in which it is more likely to endure.

The bargain is more likely to hold when the role remains chosen, the ask stays bounded, support matches responsibility and the contribution gives something back.

When those conditions erode, the exchange becomes one-sided. Contribution hardens into obligation, while the language of community makes the burden harder to name.

A bottle of wine at the end of the season can become a substitute for support, role design or paid capability that should have arrived much earlier.

That is how a contract problem gets mistaken for a recruitment problem.

For a long time, the answer to volunteer pressure has been to recruit harder.

Find another committee member. Ask the parents again. Divide the role. Send another email. Appeal to people's sense of duty.

Sometimes that works.

But some work has changed.

Community sport now carries more demanding requirements around safeguarding, health and safety, insurance, financial accountability, employment and asset management.

These requirements often exist for good reasons. The issue is what that work now asks of the person carrying it.

Few people step forward because they want to read insurance policies, interpret compliance requirements or become amateur risk managers. They volunteer because they want to coach, connect, help kids, support a club, organise an event, give back or feel useful.

Goodwill matters. But goodwill is not a staffing model for work that has become technical, risky or continuous.

Goodwill is one of community sport’s currencies. Leaders spend it whenever they ask someone to carry work because they care. The question is whether it is the right currency for the job, and whether the role gives enough back to renew it.

There is often a mismatch between the work people are motivated and equipped to do and the burden the organisation needs someone to carry. That mismatch becomes harder when roles require continuity that no longer fits the time people have available. A person may be willing to help for two hours, coach for a season or support a particular event. That does not mean they can absorb an open-ended administrative responsibility.

Sometimes the answer is not more recruitment.

It is subtraction.

Subtraction from what volunteers are expected to carry.

Some work can be removed or simplified. Some can be shared, funded, automated or shifted to paid capability. Other burdens need to be addressed further upstream rather than passed down through governing bodies, funders and institutions to the same few people at club level.

The test is not only whether a task is necessary.

It is whether goodwill is still the right place for the work to sit.

But removing inappropriate burden is only half the leadership task.

The other half is understanding what can be lost when contribution itself is designed out.

A club president once told me about a disagreement during a clubroom redevelopment.

One member wanted to donate a television and hang it on the wall. Another objected because it disrupted the architectural intent of the space.

The president was also the project architect.

He understood the design objection. But he also understood that the television was not only a television. It was a member trying to contribute something to the club.

He made room for it.

The wall may not have been exactly as intended. But the member had been allowed to leave a mark, exercise some agency and feel that the club was partly theirs.

The finished wall was not the only outcome.

There may be a better way to complete a task. A contractor may do it faster. A standardised solution may produce a cleaner result.

But the act of contributing can create value for the person doing it and for the life of the club around them.

That value may be modest and cumulative: friendship, confidence, competence, influence, identity and a reason to return.

Not all volunteer work produces this.

Some is transactional: the task gets done.

Some is generative: the task also creates belonging, trust, confidence, leadership and a willingness to contribute again.

Some is extractive: the task consumes goodwill without enough meaning, support or reciprocity.

Every role has a transactional layer. The gate still needs opening. The roster still needs filling. The accounts still need reconciling.

The question is what else the role produces.

A working bee can fix a fence. It can also make people feel that the club is theirs.

A team manager can organise logistics. They can also help new families belong.

The healthiest volunteer roles get the task done while leaving the person carrying them more connected, capable and invested than they were before. At its best, that is one of the ordinary ways sport builds shared responsibility.

That does not mean volunteering automatically builds social cohesion.

It can also reproduce exclusion, overload insiders and rely disproportionately on people with more time, confidence, money and familiarity with how to step forward. The opportunity to volunteer is unevenly distributed.

Volunteer involvement is not always better. But its value cannot be measured only by the task completed.

Some organisations are volunteer-rich by design. Others are volunteer-dependent by default. Those are not the same thing.

The difference is not simply money. A financially stretched club can still have a strong culture of contribution: people feel ownership, roles are clear, work is shared and helping gives something back.

A better-resourced organisation can still treat volunteers mainly as unpaid capacity used to fill gaps in delivery.

The distinction reaches beyond how leaders understand volunteering. It reaches into what they think the club is for.

A club can be understood as a service provider: its job is to deliver safe, reliable sport to players and families. It can also be understood as a civic institution: a place where people contribute, take responsibility and help create the thing they belong to.

Most clubs are both. The tension is not a design problem to solve once. It has to be stewarded through decisions about what gets paid, what remains open to contribution and what each kind of work requires.

Volunteer-rich and volunteer-dependent organisations may both report high involvement and, from a distance, look similar.

Unpaid work can look like community spirit when it is really the same few people absorbing work the organisation or wider system has not redesigned, resourced or removed.

When a role becomes mostly burden and gives too little back, willingness frays. When every function is professionalised and members have no meaningful way to contribute, ownership can fray too.

But one model builds people's willingness to keep contributing.

The other spends it.

The leadership task is to reduce dependence without designing out ownership.

The distinction is not volunteer versus professional.

Some functions need professional capability because they require technical skill, continuity or careful management of risk.

Children need safe coaches. Clubs need sound financial management. New families need welcoming environments. Public and charitable funding requires accountability.

Necessary capability does not appear simply because a club needs it.

Paid capability can carry work that has outgrown goodwill. It can remove administrative and technical burdens from volunteer roles. It can make participation safer, delivery more reliable and expectations clearer.

Done well, professionalisation creates more room for meaningful contribution. It can also displace that contribution.

The relationship can begin to shift: the organisation provides, the participant consumes. Work may become more efficient while fewer people feel responsible for the shared life of the club.

The club may look successful from the outside while becoming increasingly transactional inside.

The club president had seen that risk elsewhere: a club that had professionalised much of its operation and later worried it had become transactional. His question was not whether to professionalise, but what to professionalise and where to leave room for members to contribute.

The aim is not to preserve unpaid work for its own sake, but to preserve meaningful ways for people to contribute. Professional capability should remove work volunteers should not be carrying and create the conditions in which better volunteering becomes possible.

Not every part of the volunteer contract is written at club level.

Grassroots leaders shape roles, support people and decide where work should sit. But governing bodies, funders, councils and other institutions also shape the expectations that arrive at the club door.

The club may be where willingness finally frays.

It is not always where the burden was created.

At every level, the question is whether work sits where it can be carried well, without removing the opportunities to contribute that give community sport some of its civic value.

This is where leadership gets harder than recruitment.

The answer is neither simply more volunteers nor simply more paid staff.

Before asking for more people, leaders should examine the work already on offer.

Where are we designing a service to be delivered, and where are we creating a community people help sustain? Where do those purposes reinforce each other, and where do they pull apart?

What does the role require in time, skill, continuity and accountability, and is goodwill the right currency for it?

What does it give back to the person carrying it: purpose, connection, ownership or a place to be useful?

Has the role remained bounded, or has the ask quietly expanded?

What should be removed, simplified, shared, funded, shifted upstream or carried by paid capability?

If a function is professionalised, how will people still find meaningful ways to contribute?

Community sport will always need people willing to contribute beyond their own participation.

Repeated contact can turn strangers into familiar faces.

A clubroom can give that familiarity somewhere to gather.

A meaningful role can turn belonging into responsibility.

A fair bargain does not make every task enjoyable. But it makes the ask clear, the burden bounded, the support real and the contribution meaningful.

The volunteer contract may be unwritten.

It should not be invisible.

Keep showing up,
Hamish