Free Sport Volunteer Recruitment Fair offers ‘mix and match’ opportunity for community sport groups

By Jackson Starr

On the heels of its recently-released Volunteer Toolbox resource hub, the Ottawa Sport Council will be holding its first-ever Sport Volunteer Recruitment Fair on Saturday, Sept. 28 at St. Laurent Shopping Centre.

Community sport organizations can register via SportOttawa.ca to setup a table at the fair free of charge, while prospective volunteers can see different opportunities to get involved.

“With our members, who are all community support organizations, one of the biggest challenges they’re having is recruiting volunteers,” underlines OSC executive director Marci Morris. “We expect to have a number of community sport organizations there that are looking for volunteers, and we also expect to have a number of people there who are looking for volunteer opportunities.

“It might be students, it might be adults. And so the whole point is, it’s like a mix and match.”

OSC is running the fair in collaboration with Volunteer Ottawa, which supports volunteers and not-for-profit organizations across all sectors. Volunteer Ottawa also helped develop a sport volunteer portal as part of the Toolbox.

The project, which received funding from the federal government’s Community Services Recovery Fund, came in response to many local community sport organizations highlighting challenges such as a shrinking pool of volunteers, high turnover, and a lack of organizational capacity to effectively recruit, onboard, train, manage and recognize new volunteers, the OSC noted.

“The whole point of the volunteer toolbox is to take people through from the recruitment stage to the retirement stage,” Morris explains. “So how do you recruit somebody? And then, once you’ve recruited them, what should you be doing? You should be training them. You should be thanking them. You should be asking them how they’re doing. You should be checking in with them too.

“Maybe they get promoted, or if they’ve had enough and they want to leave, then you’re thanking them, and you’re asking them how could your experience have been better? What did you like? What did you not like? So you, as an organization, have continuous learning.”

The biggest goal of holding the recruitment fair is to support community sports organizations and their operations, says Morris, noting that it’s become an increasingly big challenge for sports groups in recent years.

“73% of community sport organizations across Canada are run by volunteers,” she highlights, “and what we saw during the pandemic was we lost a lot of those volunteers.

“So many of our organizations are really struggling in two ways. They’re struggling to find people to help them in the field of play, like coaches or officials or trainers, (and) with finding people for their board of directors, which is required for good governance.”

Morris adds that volunteers are “the heart” of the local sports community.

“We’re coming together as a community to make life better,” she signals. “First of all, sport is often the place that newcomers to Canada first get involved with because it’s the one language that they speak.

“They might not speak English, but they play soccer, they play lacrosse, or they play cricket, and it gets them involved in that community. So from a mental health perspective and building a thriving community, from that perspective, it’s really important.

“Also from the perspective of a person feeling worthwhile and being able to contribute. Many people want to help out, but they really don’t know how to help out.

“The whole volunteer thing, whether it’s the sports sector, the arts sector, the homeless sector, whatever it is, those volunteers help.

“It just brings more services, more assets to everybody in our community, whether they can afford to pay for them or not. And I think, personally, it makes our city a better place.”

The fair opens at 10 a.m. and runs until 1 p.m. on Sept. 28 at the Centre Court in St. Laurent Shopping Centre, with setup beginning at 9:30 a.m.

“We welcome all ages. We welcome all abilities,” Morris notes. “We welcome everything and everyone. We’ll find a place for somebody who wants to come and volunteer.”