Nancy Lane, Volunteer Coordinator
I offered to help with the volunteer coordinator job because a mom I knew from my kid's school had to step down due to a serious health issue in her family. I didn't realize at the time that the job didn't really exist yet, and that I would be creating something basically from scratch! Once that became apparent, I spent some time the first year figuring out how to use sPortability to write emails to the club parents and how to track the hours that parents devoted to the Club. I probably spent about 16 hours total, which was the team requirement at that time.
In the following years I started pestering the other coordinators to help me write up their volunteer work into "position descriptions" so that it would be easier to recruit people into them (after all, I'm probably the only one in the Club foolish enough to take on a job without knowing anything about it.)
Now we are moving into a whole 'nother level - writing up as much of the Club's history and institutional memory as we can, to make it even easier to encourage new groups of parents to get more involved. More than 16 hours a year? Yep, but it's my choice - it's something I can do to leave the Club in better shape than when I arrived. Since it's made me a better soccer parent - PCA workshops, end of season parties, lots of games watched - it seems only fair.
What's YOUR story?
- Nancy Lane, March 2, 2008
parent, Under-16 boy
(who started as an Under-12 boy)
Volunteer Coordinator, 2004-2008
Peter Costantinidis, Photo Day Organizer, Webmaster, President
I first became involved with volunteering in 2000 when my daughter's coach asked me if I could attend the monthly meetings as a representative for our team. Back then, all teams were encouraged/expected to have a representative at each monthly meeting. I was the natural choice because, at that time, they were held a block from where I lived. At one of the meetings, Kathy Bjornstad said she wanted to find someone to take over the Photo Day Organizer job from her. That sounded easy, so I volunteered.
About a year later, we needed a new webmaster, taking over for Stephen Shub. This was a position for which I needed no training at all, sign me up! I saw this as an opportunity to try to collect some of the institutional knowledge and history of our club. For example, instead of simply posting the current year's volunteer award winners, I tracked down as much of the previous year winners as I could and posted them as well. In 2008, I got us a wiki subscription
Eventually, our board adopted new Bylaws and added a number of "Board Member at Large" positions. I was elected to the board in 2003. In 2005, I was elected as Vice President, with Jeff Wood as President. After Jeff completed two terms, I was elected President in 2007. In July, 2007, I published our first newsletter. The newsletter was really Kimberley Guillen's inspiration, not mine. It was such a great success that Monica Yu answered the help wanted ad and took over as editor for the very next issue. Later in the year, a new volunteer, Jackie Leung, answered a newsletter help wanted ad and stepped forwards to take over my Photo Day Organizer duties.
My only child will be going off to college next year, so I don't know what the future will hold for me. My only hope is that the Montclair Soccer Club continues to thrive as the fantastic soccer community I've witnessed during the past decade.
- Peter Costantinidis, March 2, 2008
Soccer parent since 1997