"More volunteers in football clubs” — advisory programme of the Swiss Football Association to promote volunteers.

Volunteers are the most important resource for non-profit sports clubs to deliver affordable sports services. Although many people already volunteer in sports clubs, a high number of clubs experiences difficulties in recruiting and retaining sufficient numbers of volunteers to manage and staff their clubs (Lamprecht, Fischer, & Stamm, 2012). In order to facilitate volunteer recruitment, sport clubs need a specific strategy describing how to recruit and retain volunteers for both formal positions and ad hoc tasks. Therefore, the advisory program “More Volunteers in Football Clubs“ was designed. Considering the sport clubs specific characteristics, the advisory tool was developed in the form of four workshops, serving as a type of a systemic
advisory service (Bette, 2009).
Case study research was carried out with 10 Swiss football clubs participated in the advisory program of the Swiss Football Association SFA. Before, during and after the program, questionnaires and guided interviews were conducted with the leading actors of clubs’ project teams to assess crucial factors of the process of implementation within the advisory program. The findings indicate that processes of implementation in the clubs occur differently. However, regardless the success of implementation, within all clubs both promoting and restrictive factors can be identified. Promoting factors that sustain the process are internal support,
an engaged project team, proactive communication, specific adaption of impulses and effective working processes. In contrast, restricting factors are lack of internal support, an uninvolved project team, communication failure, low processing capacity and a lack of resources.

References
Bette, K.-H. (2009). Beratung von Sportorganisationen: Konzepte und Voraussetzungen. In C. Breuer & A. Thiel (Ed.), Handbuch Sportmanagement (2nd ed., pp. 139–155). Schorndorf: Hofmann.
Lamprecht, M., Fischer, A., & Stamm, H.-P. (2012). Sportvereine in der Schweiz. Strukturen, Leistungen, Herausforderungen. Zürich: Seismo