V4V project plans first ever volunteer survey of sport organisations

The Alliance, along with 11 other expert partners from the European sector, met online on Wednesday 10 November to discuss key ideas, components and details for the survey.

The main points which the partners agreed to were:

• The survey should be as comprehensive as possible, targeting all types of organisations who directly deploy sport volunteers or have an overall responsibility (for example, national and international federations).
• The questionnaire should aim to collect information and data on the most relevant issues, such as organisation and volunteer workforce profile, skills needs and gaps, policies and practices for recruitment and retention, management, training and support and perceived incentives and barriers to volunteering.
• There is also the opportunity to gain a better understanding of sport volunteering, the challenges which organisations face and examples of good practice in volunteer recruitment, deployment, training and management and to identify the value of volunteering for the sector.

The survey is expected to be approved at a follow-up session in the new year, before being fully prepared and launched via an online platform in mid-March 2022, with questionnaires in as many European languages as feasible.

Martin Lindsey, Chief Operating Officer of the Sport and Recreation Alliance, said, “Following the desk research and literature review undertaken for the first stage of phase one of the V4V project, the Alliance is now supporting the development of the online survey for sport and recreation organisations with our V4V European partners.

“Once developed the survey will be available for Alliance members to complete with the results contributing to the outputs for the latter phases of the project which will develop new and innovative tools and resources for the engagement, development, retention and showcasing of sport and recreation volunteers in Europe."

Aurélien Favre, EOSE’s Executive Director, added, “The V4V project is reaching a really exciting phase which we are all looking forward to. The partners have done some incredibly patient and detailed background research into what is already known.

“Now this first ever survey of sport organisations on the subject of volunteering will reveal findings which will be genuinely new, authentic and unique for the European sport community.

“We can’t wait to analyse the data and see the results. If we get this right, the survey will provide rich raw material for the partners to create tools for organisations and volunteers to really improve and sustain the undoubted contributions which volunteers make to the vital activities which our sector carries out.”

V4V aims to analyse the sport volunteer workforce, improve recruitment and retention, and create an innovative online self-assessment tool which identifies and showcases their skills and competences to potential employers and education providers. For more information about the project, visit www.v4v-sport.eu.

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