Club committee roles and responsibilities explained

Behind every community sports club is a committee — a handful of volunteers who keep the whole thing running between games. If you're new to a committee, stepping into a role, or trying to fill next year's positions, it helps to know exactly who does what. Here's a plain-English guide to the core roles, what each one really involves, and how to spread the work so the same few people aren't left carrying it all.

President (or Chair)

The president is the public face and steady hand of the club. They chair committee and general meetings, keep everyone focused on the club's goals, and are usually the first point of contact for the league, the council and other clubs. When a tricky decision needs making, the buck tends to stop with them.

Time commitment: this is a leadership role, not the busiest one — but it's an "always on" one. Expect a few hours a week fielding emails and calls, plus meetings. It peaks around finals, the AGM and any big issue that lands.

Tip: a good president delegates rather than does. Your job is to make sure every other role is filled and supported, not to quietly pick up whatever nobody else wants.

Vice-President

The vice-president backs up the president and steps in when they're away. In many clubs it's also a deliberate stepping stone — a year learning the ropes before taking the top job. Beyond covering, a vice-president often takes ownership of a project or two, like a facility upgrade or a season-long initiative.

Time commitment: lighter than the president's, but ramps up whenever you're covering or running a specific project.

Tip: use the year to genuinely understand the treasurer's numbers and the secretary's paperwork. It makes a future handover far smoother.

Secretary

The secretary is the club's administrative engine. They organise meetings and circulate agendas, take and distribute minutes, handle incoming and outgoing correspondence, and keep the club's records and governing documents in order. In most clubs they also manage the association's compliance paperwork and lodgements.

Time commitment: steady all year, with spikes around meetings and the AGM. Often one of the heavier ongoing roles because so much correspondence flows through one inbox.

Tip: a shared club calendar and a single, well-organised place for documents saves hours. The less that lives in one person's personal inbox, the easier next year's handover becomes.

Treasurer

The treasurer looks after the money: registration income, sponsorship, grants, bar and canteen takings, and every expense that goes out. They pay the bills, track the budget, present a financial report at each meeting, and prepare the year-end accounts for the AGM. It's a role that rewards being organised and punctual.

Time commitment: regular and unavoidable — money keeps moving whether or not you have time. Reconciliation and reporting cluster around meetings and end of financial year.

Tip: when membership registrations and payments come through the club's platform, the treasurer gets a clear record of who has paid and can pull reporting without chasing bank statements line by line — which cuts a lot of the manual bookkeeping.

Registrar / Membership Officer

The registrar signs members up, processes renewals, keeps player and family details current, and makes sure everyone is properly registered with the league before round one. In junior clubs they're often the ones fielding "have I paid yet?" questions all through pre-season.

Time commitment: intense in the weeks before the season starts, much quieter once everyone's registered.

Tip: online membership registration and renewals with a searchable member directory turn this from a spreadsheet marathon into something you can manage from your phone — members enter their own details, and the list stays current without re-keying.

Volunteer Coordinator

Someone has to fill the canteen shifts, the gate, the ground set-up and the pack-down. The volunteer coordinator builds the rosters, asks (and re-asks) people to sign up, and covers the gaps when someone can't make it.

Time commitment: a steady weekly rhythm through the season, heaviest on game days and around big events.

Tip: volunteer rosters that let members claim their own shifts take the coordinator out of the middle of every swap and reminder, so the job stops being a constant chase.

Sponsorship / Fundraising Coordinator

This role keeps the lights on financially. They approach and renew local sponsors, deliver on what was promised (signage, social posts, shout-outs), and run the fundraisers — trivia nights, raffles, the season-launch function.

Time commitment: concentrated around the pre-season sponsorship push and each fundraising event, lighter in between.

Tip: having sponsorship features in your club platform to showcase and manage sponsors makes it easy to show a prospective sponsor exactly where their logo will appear — and gives you something concrete to renew against next year.

Canteen Coordinator

The canteen is often the club's biggest earner, and it needs running like a small business: ordering stock, setting up floats, keeping the food-safety basics in order, and making sure it's staffed every game day. It's unglamorous and genuinely important.

Time commitment: weekly through the season, with a real physical load on game days.

Tip: lean on the volunteer roster for canteen shifts rather than the coordinator personally being there every week — the role should be organising, not standing behind the counter all season.

Child Safety / Member Protection Officer

For any club with juniors, this is a role you can't skip. The member protection officer is the point of contact for concerns, helps make sure coaches and volunteers have current Working with Children Checks, and supports a safe, welcoming environment for kids and families.

Time commitment: usually light week to week, but you need to be reachable and ready to act properly if something is raised.

Tip: defined roles and audit-logged views of member details help here — it should be clear who can see a child's information, and there should be a record of when member details are accessed. That's better for families and better for the club.

Communications Officer

The comms role keeps everyone in the loop: game-day updates, wet-weather calls, event reminders and the general news that stops members feeling out of touch. Done well, it's the difference between a club that feels connected and one that feels like a mystery.

Time commitment: little-and-often — a few minutes most days rather than one big block.

Tip: app notifications and announcements let you reach the whole club, a team or a single group in seconds, so a wet-weather cancellation actually gets to people before they've left home.

Sharing the load — and avoiding the "same few people" trap

Nearly every club knows the pattern: three or four people do eighty per cent of the work, quietly burn out, and eventually walk away — often taking years of knowledge with them. The fix isn't finding more heroes. It's making the roles smaller.

Split big jobs into sub-roles (a canteen coordinator plus a small canteen team, not one martyr). Write down what each role actually involves so it's a defined task, not a bottomless commitment. And genuinely ask new and younger members to take something on — most people say yes to a clear, bounded job, and never volunteer for a vague one. Anything a platform can automate — registrations, payments, rosters, notifications — is one less thing a volunteer has to hold in their head.

Making committee handover smooth each year

The AGM refreshes the committee, and that's exactly when knowledge quietly disappears if you let it. A few habits make handover painless: keep club records, logins and documents in shared places rather than personal accounts; write a short one-page "how I do this role" note for each position; and pair an outgoing officer with their replacement for a few weeks rather than a single rushed handover email.

When your membership, payments, rosters and communications all live in one platform tied to defined roles, handover is largely a matter of reassigning access — not reconstructing a year of loose knowledge from scratch. That continuity is what keeps a volunteer-run club healthy long after any one committee moves on.