Manage club volunteers

VOLUNTEERS Reading time : 4 min Updated August 1, 2026
Volunteers keep amateur clubs running. Paak tracks who helps, on which slot, with what status — no parallel spreadsheet. This article covers the basics: where the section lives, how to declare a volunteer, how to build your roles. To publish a slot, see Publish a volunteer slot.

Where to find it

In the sidebar, under Management, click Volunteers. The section has four tabs:

  • Volunteers — the people you have declared, their roles, their hours.
  • Slots — the slots the club publishes for members to claim.
  • Hours — batch entry and approval.
  • Roles — refreshments, scoring table, transport… the club's recurring jobs.
The Volunteers section is restricted to Club admin accounts. A Staff account does not see this menu entry — inviting someone as Staff will not give them volunteer management.

Add a volunteer

Any member can be declared a volunteer alongside their main role. It is an extra hat: the volunteer record attaches to an existing contact, it does not create a new contact type.

  1. Management → Volunteers, then "Add a volunteer".
  2. Search for and pick a contact already in your database. If they do not exist yet, create them first under Members.
  3. Set the status (Active by default; Pending, Inactive or On leave as needed), the start date, their skills (comma-separated: first aid, coaching, organising…) and free-text notes.
  4. Tick the roles to assign, if you have created any.

You do not need to declare everyone up front. When a member claims a slot from their member portal, Paak creates their volunteer record automatically — see Publish a volunteer slot.

Create roles

A role describes a recurring club job: "Refreshments lead", "U13 driver", "Scoring table". From the Roles tab, each role carries a name, a description, responsibilities, required skills and a minimum and maximum number of volunteers.

Roles let you:

  • Filter the volunteer list ("who can run the bar?").
  • Label a published slot so members know what is being asked of them.
  • Attach recorded hours to a job, and total them per role.

A role also carries a "supervises minors" setting. Turn it on for the roles that genuinely supervise — coach, youth away-trip escort. Leave it off everywhere else: see the next section.

Child protection: supervisors, not every volunteer

This is where clubs most often go wrong, and it costs real paperwork: the child-protection duty does not target "volunteers". It targets functions.

In France, article L. 212-9 of the code du sport provides that no one may exercise "the functions mentioned in the first paragraph of article L. 212-1, whether paid or voluntary, or in articles L. 223-1 and L. 322-7, nor work with minors within physical and sports activity establishments" while disqualified. In plain terms: teaching, leading, supervising a physical or sporting activity or training its participants; refereeing or judging; operating a sports establishment — which the Ministry of Sports' own briefing note attaches "notably" to association officers.

None of those functions describes the parent pouring drinks at the bar, the parent on the scoring table, or the parent doing an occasional supervised drive. Asking them for a criminal-record extract is pointless admin — and it pulls into the club's files a record of criminal convictions, a category governed by Article 10 GDPR.

That is why Paak triggers nothing by default: the "This slot supervises minors" checkbox is unticked when you create a slot, and you tick it only on the slots that need it. Country-by-country detail is in Child protection: who is actually covered.

Tracking the attestations themselves happens on the Compliance side.

FAQ

Does a volunteer need a Paak account?
No. A volunteer is a club contact, not a user. They reach their slots from their member portal, via a personal link received by email — no account, no password.
Can I record each volunteer's availability?
No, and that is deliberate. Paak keeps no availability calendar: the club publishes slots and members take the ones that suit them. That is how a bar rota actually fills — nobody registers their availability in advance, they say yes when asked.
Can I handle several volunteers at once?
Yes, for hours: the Hours tab offers batch entry (one date, one role, one figure per person) and bulk approval. See Record and approve hours.
Is there a volunteer export?
Not today. Hours and slots are read and filtered on screen. A dedicated volunteer export does not exist yet; the CSV export that does exist covers supervisor background checks, on the Compliance side.
Is the volunteer module paid?
No. Volunteers, slots, roles and hours are available on the free plan. What sits on the paid plans is automated background-check tracking (Paak One and above) — which is also what makes the "supervises minors" block enforce.
Last updated: August 1, 2026 ID : help.volunteers.manage-volunteers