Dear Cru Family,
As we gear up for another exciting season on the pitch, I want to take a moment to talk about what happens off the pitch.
Our club is run entirely by volunteers. We take massive pride in the quality of our clubhouse, our grounds, and our programs. However, as our membership grows and the logistics of running the club become more complex, we are facing a challenge common to many grassroots sports organizations: volunteer scarcity and burnout.
Currently, a very small percentage of our members are carrying the vast majority of the workload. From lining the pitches and running the BBQ, to organizing tournaments and managing equipment, these few dedicated individuals are stretched too thin. To keep our club thriving, we need to share the load.
Building a Stronger Club Culture
Beyond just keeping the lights on and giving our core volunteers some much-needed support, we genuinely believe this shift will make our club culture fundamentally stronger.
When parents of our Minis are flipping burgers next to Senior players, or when Junior athletes are helping set up the pitch alongside our alumni, our community gets tighter. It breaks down the silos between our different teams and age grades. Volunteering side-by-side builds a shared sense of pride and ownership in our club our clubhouse and our grounds. We want Cru to be more than just a place where you play a match or drop off your kids — we want it to be a true rugby home built and sustained by the people who love it.
Introducing the Cru Volunteer Bond
To ensure the long-term sustainability of our club and foster that shared ownership, as many other clubs in Canada have, we are introducing a Volunteer Bond program this upcoming season.
Our absolute preference is that we do not keep a single dime of this bond. The goal of this initiative is not to generate revenue; it is strictly to encourage the teamwork required to run our club. We want and need your time, not your money.
How the Program Works:
- The Bond: At registration, a refundable volunteer bond of $100 will be added to the registration fee for each player.
- The Commitment: The base commitment is 8 hours of volunteer work per player/family. For families with more than one player registered, each additional player adds 4 hours to the family’s total commitment.
- The Process: If you paid a bond, you will receive an email inviting you to accept your profile on Vome, our volunteer management platform.
Crucial Note: You must use the same email address for Vome as you will use for your PlayHQ account when registering for Crusaders, otherwise we won’t be able to track your hours against your bond.
- The Opportunities: Once you log into Vome, you can easily apply or sign up for a wide variety of opportunities – and we’ll be adding more as the season approaches. We also highly recommend downloading the Vome Volunteer App to your phone and enabling push notifications so you get instant alerts about shift schedules, cancellations, or location changes. Once you, for instance, apply for “Event Volunteer” opportunities, you’ll be notified when the come up and can quickly and easily book yourself (or a family member) in.
- The Refund: Once your required hours are completed, tracked, and approved in Vome, you will be eligible for full refund of your bond. There’s a volunteer bond status page on the website where you easily can track your hours and refund.
- Unfulfilled Bonds: If the volunteer hours are not completed by the end of October, the bond will be retained by the club to cover the costs of the operational tasks we will inevitably have to pay outside vendors to complete.
- Important Club Policies to Note:
- No-Show Policy: If you book a shift and do not show up, an extra hour will be added to your required volunteer hours. Please be considerate of the teams relying on you!
- High School Volunteer Hours: High school students can easily earn their required community service hours at the club – it’ll be easier and more organized than ever! However, please note that if you are a player or club member, earned high school volunteer hours do not count toward your/your family’s volunteer bond hours. (Students claiming high school hours should create their own personal Vome account with a different email address than the family’s PlayHQ/Vome account).
Moving Forward as a Team
Rugby is the ultimate team sport. You can’t win a match with only three players on the field, and we can’t run a successful club with only a handful of volunteers. By distributing the effort, we guarantee a better experience for everyone who wears the Crusaders jersey.
For more details, you can visit the volunteer page on our website here: https://crusadersrugby.club/volunteers/ and there’s more practical info here: https://crusadersrugby.club/help/
If you have any immediate questions, please feel free to reach out to me directly at president@crusadersrugby.ca.
Thank you for your understanding, your support, and your dedication to the Cru. Let’s make this our best season yet!
Chris Tudor Price
President, Crusaders Rugby Club
