Volunteerism in Canadian Organized Sport: A Human Resource Management Approach

Abstract

Community sport organizations (CSOs) are providers of organized sport for much of the Canadian population. As non-profit organizations that rely on volunteer aid for the management and delivery of sport, CSOs face difficulties in gaining stable volunteers. With little research existing on volunteers at the community sports level, and in an effort to grow CSOs’ voluntary workforce, this research looks at two aspects of human resource management. First, planning, to establish the antecedents that characterize CSO volunteers and determine their level of agreement with the fact that their families volunteer, and second, retention, by establishing the presence of nostalgia within CSO volunteers for use in future volunteer retention efforts. Practical contributions include aiding management in CSOs with the return to organized sport, helping Canadian policy makers, and adding to the limited cost-efficient retention strategies available to CSOs and other non-profit organizations.