Volunteering / Club Duties

Both my summer and winter clubs are entirely volunteer run and that includes the officers of the club, and instructors in our sailing school with up to 80 children and the odd adult learning . The only paid person is the cleaner who comes in the morning after sailing.
https://www.horning-sailing.club/
https://www.sfsc.co.uk/
It is expected of both club each member does a duty, T bar, rescue boat, running the line, many others do club committee, club maintenance and assist in other ways.

I do rescue boat ( May 14th this year) and this year I'll do rescue boat for five mornings of the seven days of this years regatta week.

Then there is the 3 Rivers Race https://www.3rr.uk/, there are around 100+ boats entering each year, so nearly 300 competitors.
That requires,
A dozen guardships with rescue boat each with at least 4 persons on board.
There are about a dozen line crew, race officers, time keepers, radio operators, computer operators.
Then the galley staff minimum of two staff on at any time for 36 hours with more at peak times.
In all there are about 100 volunteers. Giving up 36 hours of their time.

Also I volunteer here., https://www.radarmuseum.co.uk/ for one day a week only the manager is paid, everyone else is a volunteer.

Come to that I'm a member of http://broadlandmodelrailwayclub.co.uk/ which if you've looked at it, has a show in 4 weeks time, the entire club volunteers to run that. Plus the obvious duties of chairman, secretary treasurer , show manager, etc.

Whilst all could do with more volunteers, so far all these groups have still got enough volunteers to run their events.

Long term volunteers have done is a huge favour and hopefully people will follow in their footsteps. Half the sailing clubs in the UK would be gone without them.
Pensioners run neighborhood watch by me, since it started we have had no burglaries and a big reduction in people calling at the doors, they will also take in parcels, give keys to contractors.

Originally posted by Old bloke In my club, and hopefully elsewhere, it's the next couple of generations of retirees that have taken over. The only problem I see is that there is a short spell between no longer fit to sail and dead .

As Eric said, duties are part of the "contract" when you join a club and as far as volunteering goes to my mind that is also part of an implied contract.

Originally posted by Old bloke It all depends on how long it takes people to go from fit to dead. Until recently UK health statistics were showing that people were staying fitter for longer and taking the same amount of time to fade away and die. Of recent years the length of infirmity has been increasing again. Probably mostly due to obesity and diabetes. Whether this is going to be significantly true for us healthy sporty types time will tell. Obviously there is a big difference between statistics and the individual's experience