Mick
As a club member I feel I have a responsibilty to help out as a volunteer, but due to the way we allow the insurers to dictate the way our sport is run we have the following barriers in place for people like me to help out.
1. To hold a lollipop sign the club has to pay money for us to do a course. The club member has to donate time to the course before they can offer to donate time to the running of a race, and ultimatley the money for the course must come from the club members. Suggesting two races per year per vounteer and there is more time in the training than the actual volunteering.
2. To run the race you have to be a commissaire... once again more time and effort before you can even help out.
3. Insurances mean a licence costs in excess of $200 for a year (and as from this year, in excess of 3/4 of that for a half year). We only have a limited number of road races in a year. If Friday afternoons for the crit season are difficult to justify to the wife, and assuming you can't race every week of the road season then one likes to race when they can to get value for money.
All of this adds up (speaking from personal experience) to make a member feel like it is all too hard. It's not like you can even have a compulsory roster, (no volunteering = no racing) because you have to have qualifications to help out.
Take the insurers out, take the police out, take the training out and watch the flood of vounteers.
Until you get around the need to have volunteers trained by another organisation, we will never have enough.
Let's stop paying small amounts of money to the race winners, and use the money to pay for TC's. I'm sure we all know a few kids that would happily do a TC course for free and get paid $50 for 1.5 hours of work.
Volunteers are worth their weight in gold and lets be thankful for them.
Unfortunately this sport needs to be run on public roads so you cant exclude the police and any other authorising body.
I think most riders would give up a race or two over the whole year between road races and crits to attend a role to run a race. I'll put my hand up now. Maybe as part of our membership we can add a few dollars extra each to cover doing a course. In the end it is for the better of the club and its members.
Why cant we have a schedule where every member is put down for a role over the year. It's TWO races! We see the same faces each week giving up their time and I'm sure some of them would like to have a race.
Without these volunteers or rather NECESSITIES we wont have any racing.
Has the club considered some fund raising? This week alone I have been approached by OTHER members who have businesses interested in sponsoring the club. I would even consider it. Some of this money could go towards training people.
Do we have a proposal for potential sponsors? How does the club raise extra funds?
I see this discussion too often in the showjumping world. Without volunteers there is no show. Fortunately we dont have to deal with police or RTA but we do have insurances to contend with and trust me, its a lot tougher in showjumping than road racing.
As a Ridin Instructor my own insurances are over $3k per year, horse & rider memberships over $500 per year, entry fees per show average $700 (we do a show every weekend from oct to April) and thats all for a wonderful 65 seconds of fun!
So, I'll put my hand up now to do a TC's course and help out and I think I can manage taking entries!
