Nopesport contributors and their voluntary efforts

[Oldman]

I'd be interested to know how much time Nopesport readers give to orienteering voluntarily (ie unpaid).

Is the typical Nopesport contributor also active as a volunteer?

[HOCOLITE]

Well last week I did about 60 hours and other half 71 but I wouldn't call that quite an average week. We also managed to do some paid work but I did very little domestic work

[lincolnsteve]

Over the last 6 months I have been averaging 30-40 hpw. This has been on producing a complete new map at 1:5000 on A3 (city race for the bomber weekend, bloody time consuming i tell ya!) updating various club maps, committee meetings, advisory groups, updating websites, planning & organising various events, dealing with loads of requests that come to the club and doing my fixtures role. Thankfully come January the workload will drop significantly and I can have some evenings to myself. To be honest though over the last 3 months I have had a very casual job and I have been greatful to be doing something with my free days. Some people like killing time on computer games, I love putting my time into my club. I'm sure orienteering alone clocks up hundreds of thousands of hours a year from volunteers, when you think of sporting organisations as a whole the time spent volunteering must be collosal.

It would be interesting to know how much volunteer hours the average C4 takes up, I would guess around 200 hours? Maybe someone should conduct a survey

[Gross]

I'm a selfish lazy so & so and have never done anything as a volunteer in the 35 years I've been orienteering..................

[Mrs H.]

ha ha ha - daft bugger!

Well definitely more time on orienteering than housework

i think the art of being a happy volunteer is sticking to stuff you enjoy (which hopefully co-incides with what you are good at).

This autumn I have spent quite a bit of time in support of young Neville as Junior captain - which has actually felt like quite hard work.

I prefer to stick to writing and bossing people about - which I actually enjoy more than the orienteering - which is really only a means to deserve a plate of chips and a bottle of Merlot. And yes not having a "proper job" helps ( but being married to a self-emplyed 70+ hour a week man doesn't).

I would imagine a lot of nopers contribute a high proportion of voluntary hours to the sport.

[SeanC]

mmmm, you can see how any trend towards families where both parents work, or an increase in the retirement age might not be so good for the sport.

Personally, I'm not able to put in masses of hours, which is one reason why I'm in favour of paying a bit more for my orienteering assuming it would help the sport.

Maybe a more interesting question is "what would make you more likely to volunteer?"