{"id":24996,"date":"2022-12-31T08:06:23","date_gmt":"2022-12-31T15:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/winddrinkers.org\/trailhead\/?p=24996"},"modified":"2022-12-31T08:06:23","modified_gmt":"2022-12-31T15:06:23","slug":"how-to-run-a-running-club","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/winddrinkers.org\/trailhead\/how-to-run-a-running-club\/","title":{"rendered":"How to “Run” a Running Club"},"content":{"rendered":"
Q:\u00a0 What does a running club run on?<\/div>\n
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A literal answer, of course, might be, “Our FEET (or legs) … DUH!!”.\u00a0 But, in a figurative sense, it’s really our volunteers<\/u><\/i>\u00a0that ‘make the club go’!\u00a0 From our races, to our Fun Runs, to our social\u00a0activities, all our events require volunteer efforts\u00a0to plan and execute. Without volunteers, there are no events!<\/div>\n
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The bulk of our volunteer efforts are performed by your Wind Drinkers officers, race directors, and committee members.\u00a0 This involves scheduling events, coordinating with land and venue managers, plotting out race courses, meeting with vendors who support our events with timing services, porta-potties, refreshments, etc.\u00a0 It also covers related administrative functions like managing memberships and running the business side of the club – functions like registering with the state and filing tax returns.\u00a0 Unlike some large running clubs, which can afford to pay CEO’s to manage club activities, these functions are all performed by volunteers, in the Big Sky Wind Drinkers (with the exception that we DO pay some of the race directors of our largest race events).\u00a0 In addition to these “standing” volunteer roles, we also solicit volunteers from our membership to support additional needs for specific events – these might include helping with Sweet Pea registration, or flagging along a race course, or, for some of our smaller runs, help with handing out race bibs, or performing hand timing functions.\u00a0 This support is critical to our being able to hold our events, which is one reason we require people to volunteer in order to earn participation awards during our Fun Run seasons.<\/div>\n
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Over the past several years (seemingly, since COVID first started impacting our events), we have struggled to get the volunteers we need to conduct our events.\u00a0 For many of our Fun Runs, volunteer timer and run support positions go unfilled, and this impacts the conduct of the events – from delays in posting results, to errors in capturing race times, or not having refreshments available for all the runners at the end of a run.\u00a0 This past summer, we went almost a whole month (4 Fun Runs) when we had no one who volunteered for any of our Fun Run volunteer positions.\u00a0 So far this Winter season, we are seeing a similar trend – of the 10 volunteer positions we have posted for our upcoming Winter Fun Run events, only 1 has been filled.<\/div>\n
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Our Board of Directors is trying to address this issue.\u00a0 The first step is making sure our members are aware of the need (hence, this article!).\u00a0 We discuss making sure the Vice-Presidents mention the need for volunteers in their pre-run announcements at Fun Runs, but sometimes, in the excitement of listing upcoming races and explaining the race course, this call for volunteers gets overlooked.\u00a0 Aside from knowing of the need, though, what might motivate our members to increasingly volunteer?\u00a0 We would love to come up with some creative incentives to bolster our volunteer numbers – if you have an idea you’d like to suggest, please let us know your ideas, using one of our Contact forms (on the right side of our Officers and Contacts page, at\u00a0https:\/\/winddrinkers.org\/trailhead\/club\/officers\/<\/a>)!<\/div>\n
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Volunteering can really be fun – it’s a great way to participate in running events when you can’t, or don’t want to, run (e.g., due to injury, or tapering for a major race), and is a way for non-running friends and family to be involved!\u00a0 Right now, our biggest needs are for race-day support of upcoming Winter Fun Runs.\u00a0 Our website’s Volunteers page (https:\/\/winddrinkers.org\/trailhead\/fun_runs\/volunteers\/<\/a>) has a listing of available volunteer positions, and signing up for one of them only requires a click and entering your name and email address!\u00a0 We are particularly in need of help for our first event of the new year<\/b>, the Resolution Run (also known as the Fat Ass 50K) on January 7th – and, unlike last year, I can promise you it won’t be 26 Below for the 2023 edition!<\/div>\n
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Whether volunteering, or simply coming out to run, we look forward to seeing you at BSWD runs in the New Year – the Wind Drinkers’ 50th Anniversary Year!<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Q:\u00a0 What does a running club run on? A literal answer, of course, might be, “Our FEET (or legs) … DUH!!”.\u00a0 But, in a figurative sense, it’s really our volunteers\u00a0that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":24589,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,46,14,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fun-runs","category-latest-news","category-news","category-races"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/winddrinkers.org\/trailhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/winddrinkers.org\/trailhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/winddrinkers.org\/trailhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winddrinkers.org\/trailhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winddrinkers.org\/trailhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24996"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/winddrinkers.org\/trailhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24998,"href":"https:\/\/winddrinkers.org\/trailhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24996\/revisions\/24998"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winddrinkers.org\/trailhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/winddrinkers.org\/trailhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winddrinkers.org\/trailhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winddrinkers.org\/trailhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}