Basingstoke RFC ‘Volunteers and Members – Make & Amend’s’
Looking to reduce operational costs we have as a club looked to energise our voluntary member and non member workforce. ‘Make & Mend Days’ are at the weekend in the off season, normally a Saturday. The Committee work to distil a list of jobs that need to be completed and put out the call to the club across all age groups Men, Women, Girls, Boys and Mini’s. We have picked out three dates so far this summer the first was Sat. 20th June followed by the 27th June and the 11th July.
We meet at the club circa 10.30am and push through to around 4.00pm. Normally followed with some form of well earned refreshments ( age applicable – obviously 🙂 )
The jobs include washing down and painting changing room walls, showers and toilets; Repairing garden furniture and club seats, strimming the grass borders around the club footprint, washing curtains in the clubhouse, window cleaning, placing safety signage in the car park, cleaning rugby training kit such as tackle pads, post protectors and tackle shields.
Last Saturday 20th June we estimate that our volunteers delivered over 100 hrs of free labour resource. We have already received 21 volunteers names for the next event (27th June) which include Mini’s Mum’s & Dad’s, youth across all age groups and Senior squad members from the Ladies and Men.
We purposely mix the volunteer work teams to build friendships and team spirit across the different age and gender groups (with the relevant safe guarding in place).
Our Goal is to try and save £3-5k in annual refurbishment costs, energise and exercise our volunteers, make it fulfilling…., but most of all FUN.
The club pays for sources the cleaning materials, paint, bushes and rollers etc. the volunteers just make sure that they are dressed for the occasion and come with a large measure of ‘Elbow Grease’.
Many of our volunteers who are professional tradesman also arrive with their own tools and fix some quite complex refurbishment challenges that have a significant cost saving.
