How to Use PlayHQ to Build Your Club's Volunteer List Before the Season Starts

Most clubs try to recruit volunteers mid-season — after rosters are already live, after the group chat has gone quiet and after the committee has already run out of energy. By then, parents and members have mentally moved on from the sign-up moment and re-engaging them takes real effort.

The smartest clubs do it differently. They capture volunteer intent at the point of player registration — when families are already engaged, already filling in a form and already thinking about the upcoming season. PlayHQ, the registration platform used by AFL, Cricket Australia, Football Australia and many other governing bodies, makes this straightforward via custom fields on the registration form.

This guide walks through the exact steps to set it up and how to get that volunteer data into Club Volunteer with a single CSV import.

Why registration time is the best moment to ask

When a parent registers their child for the season, they are at peak engagement with your club. They've just committed time and money. They're thinking about the year ahead. The question "would you like to volunteer this season?" lands completely differently at this moment than it does in a March email blast when nobody remembers signing up.

Clubs that ask at registration consistently capture more volunteer contacts than those that ask separately — without any additional effort from the committee.

Step 1: Add volunteer fields to your PlayHQ registration form

PlayHQ allows club and association administrators to add custom fields to player and participant registration forms. These fields appear as part of the standard registration flow that every family completes when signing up for the season.

Log in to PlayHQ as a club administrator and navigate to your club's registration settings. Look for Custom Fields or Registration Form settings — the exact location varies slightly depending on your sport and association configuration, so check with your association administrator if you can't find it.

Add the following two custom fields to your registration form:

1. Volunteer Name — Field type: Short text. Label: "Volunteer name (if someone in your family would like to help out this season)". Set as optional.
2. Volunteer Email — Field type: Short text / Email. Label: "Volunteer email address". Set as optional.

You can also add a brief introductory note above the fields, such as: "Our club runs entirely on volunteers. If you or someone in your family is able to help out with canteen, gate duty, scoring or ground setup this season, please leave your details below and we'll be in touch."

Step 2: Export registrations from PlayHQ

Once registrations have come in — either partway through the registration period or at the close — export your registration data from PlayHQ. Navigate to your Registrations section and use the export function to download a CSV of all registrants.

The export will include all fields on your registration form, including the volunteer name and volunteer email custom fields you added.

Step 3: Prepare the CSV for import

Club Volunteer's CSV import expects a specific column structure. You'll need to clean up the PlayHQ export before importing. Open the file in Excel or Google Sheets and:

1. Create a new sheet or file with just the volunteer rows — filter to rows where the Volunteer Email field is not blank.
2. Rename the columns to match Club Volunteer's expected format:
   • first_name — the volunteer's first name (from your Volunteer Name field, or split from a full name field)
   • last_name — the volunteer's last name
   • email — from your Volunteer Email custom field
   • phone — optional; include if you collected it
3. Delete all other columns. Save as CSV.

If the Volunteer Name field collected a full name rather than separate first and last name fields, use Excel's Text to Columns feature (Data → Text to Columns → Delimited → Space) to split it into two columns.

Step 4: Import into Club Volunteer

In Club Volunteer, go to Volunteers and click the Import button. Upload your prepared CSV file. The importer will process each row and add new volunteers to your database. If a volunteer with the same email address already exists, their record is updated rather than duplicated — so it's safe to re-import if you run the process multiple times across the registration period.

Once the import is complete, your volunteers appear immediately in the Volunteers list, ready to receive shift invitations and sign up through your public portal.

Step 5: Send a welcome message

With your volunteer list imported, use Club Volunteer's Message Volunteers page to send a welcome email to everyone who put their hand up. Introduce them to your public volunteer portal URL and let them know how shift sign-up works for the season.

A simple message works well: "Thanks for registering to volunteer this season. You can view and sign up for upcoming shifts at [your club URL]. We'll also send you reminders before each shift — all you need to do is pick the games that suit you."

The result: a full volunteer database before Round 1

Done at the start of registration season, this workflow means your club starts the year with a database of willing volunteers already loaded into Club Volunteer — before you've published a single shift roster. When you create your first round's roster and open it for sign-ups, you're sharing it with people who've already said they want to help.

It's one of the most efficient things a committee can do in the pre-season.