SwimTopia’s Top Tips and Tools for Better Volunteer Management

Volunteers are the Heart of Summer Swimming

SwimTopia understands that volunteers are the heart of summer swimming – summer swim season couldn’t even take place without an army of amazing swim parents. SwimTopia’s swim team and meet management software is specifically designed to simplify the lives of swim team volunteers. With the goal of encouraging volunteer participation while making it more fun, SwimTopia gives you the tools to organize and communicate with your volunteers, and to run your meets efficiently.

SwimTopia’s Top Tips for Volunteer Management

SwimTopia works with summer swim teams from all across the country who have honed in on the best ways to manage volunteers for their swim seasons. We’ve taken that knowledge and created an e-book on the best ways to create a culture of volunteerism for your team.

SwimTopia’s Top 5 Tips for Better Swim Team Volunteer Management includes information about how to:

1. Plan your volunteer needs
2. Set expectations early and clearly
3. Keep parents informed
4. Set volunteers up for success
5. Reward and acknowledge parents’ contributions

SwimTopia’s Top Tools for Volunteer Management

SwimTopia’s swim team software helps you implement the “tips” in our volunteering e-book. SwimTopia has built all the software features you need to simplify volunteer management for your season.

1. Team Website: communication is key to managing your volunteer needs. Use your swim team website to set expectations, provide volunteer descriptions, and convey event information.
2. Online Registration Forms: you can optionally use SwimTopia’s registration forms to have volunteers sign up for all their volunteer commitments for the season before they’re able to conclude registration. You can have parents electronically initial the team’s volunteer requirements, and have the option to hold a conditional fee that can be charged at the end of the season if hours are not completed.
3. Job Signup: if you prefer parents to sign up for jobs outside of registration, SwimTopia lets admins automatically open and close job signups on any schedule desired. SwimTopia’s schedule conflict-checking eliminates accidental errors by preventing volunteers from signing up for concurrent shifts, and parents can see the names of other volunteers that are signed up as they choose their own positions.
4. Parent Portal: team parents can log in to the website or mobile app to see all the shifts their family has signed up for during the season (so no excuses that they don’t remember what they signed up for!).
5. Reporting & Communication: it’s easy for team admins to see which families have met their volunteer requirements for any meet, or the whole season, with our robust reports. SwimTopia’s volunteer reports even give you the option to alert parents that haven’t yet signed up to volunteer for the meet, but whose kids have signed up to swim—you can send those folks a targeted email or push notification to their phone.

SwimTopia helps you manage your summer swim team and swim meets for the low cost of under $3 per swimmer, per year. Learn more about how SwimTopia can help simplify managing your summer swim team at www.SwimTopia.com.

About SwimTopia: Launched in 2011 with a focus on ease-of-use and exceptional support, SwimTopia helps summer and high school swim teams save time and increase fundraising with a modern, cloud-based software platform providing web content management, electronic commerce, online registration, volunteer coordination, team communications, online swim meet entries, meet management, and more. SwimTopia is the flagship product of Austin-based Team Topia Inc.

About the Author: Elli Overton, Director of Sales & Marketing for SwimTopia, is a 3-time Australian Olympic Swimmer and UC Berkeley Academic All American. Elli also coached summer league swimming for 4 seasons, then became Meet Director and Merchandise Coordinator for her kids’ summer swim team.

Summer swimming news is courtesy of SwimTopia, a SwimSwam partner.