World Junior Girls Golf Championship

The World Junior Girls Golf Championship is an annual event hosted by The Marshes Golf Club. It brings together 48 of the top 18-and-under female golfers from 15 countries. In addition to the 72-hole team and individual competitions, the World Junior Girls Championship is a celebration of golf with a specific focus on developing the game. Approximately 150 volunteers are recruited each year to support this event.

Challenge

The organizers of the World Junior Girls Championship were looking for a solution that would help make their complex scheduling more manageable. They could no longer spend countless hours manually organizing all of their volunteer data and double-checking that every station was covered. They needed a tool that could automate recruitment and self-sign up for certain roles while allowing them to manually assign other (more senior-level) positions.

With so many last-minute schedule changes, they also wanted a system that could easily update staff when changes were made – both before and during the tournament. With their staff and volunteers spread out across all the tournament holes, the organizers also needed a way to see which staff are checked-in at each location as well as a way to communicate to volunteers at specific locations.

Solution

Scheduling & Recruiting for the Event

Using Bloomerang Volunteer, the WJGGC was able to schedule volunteers in an organized and efficient way. The scheduling features made it simple to organize a complicated itinerary with scenarios like volunteers leaving from two different holes with tee off times every eleven minutes. Once the schedule was finalized, the event managers took advantage of Bloomerang Volunteer’s recruitment features, allowing staff and volunteers to sign-up, list their qualifications, select desired roles, and schedule themselves for available shifts. This reduced manual scheduling efforts considerably.

For the roles that the managers didn’t want accessible via the recruitment link – they were able to set them to “private” and assign them directly. This functionality worked particularly well for their Information Booth Host role since the committee already knew the specific volunteers they wanted to work in this role.

Centralizing Data for the Planning Committee

The WJGGC is planned by a committee of several people who regularly require access to all information pertaining to the event. Bloomerang Volunteer allowed the managers to store all event data, including schedules, staff lists, and contact information in one common database.

“Send More Volunteers to Hole 11, Please!”

On the day of the championship, the event managers were able to have full visibility of the schedule, checked-in staff, and schedule problems (i.e. no-shows, conflicts, etc.) via the Bloomerang Volunteer mobile app. Volunteers were also able to view their complete schedule, including a description of their specific shifts, from their mobile phones or tablets.

The software also allowed for fast and easy shift changes. For example, if a volunteer could no longer work their scheduled shift or preferred to work in a different role, the event manager could easily view available staff and schedule a replacement. The real-time functionality of InitLive — now Bloomerang Volunteer — allowed schedule changes to be implemented immediately and broadcasted to the affected volunteers.