Volunteering for Club Northwest

At Club Northwest, we take pride in our ability to provide a unique level of support for our athletes and our community. Our volunteer culture is what drives our success and Club Northwest would not be the club we all love without volunteers. It is our goal to make volunteering more equitable for all members, as well as fun and rewarding. 

We would like the CNW Elite and Brooks High Performance Athletes to be ambassadors of volunteering for Club Northwest. Starting October 2022, we are incorporating volunteer service as a requirement for sponsored athletes. Athletes applying for sponsorship of any level will be required to satisfy their service units (SU) prior to applying. The amount of volunteer service is in proportion to each funding level. One SU is required for roughly each $500 in yearly funding, and is good for one year. 

Also, we encourage all of our general membership to complete one SU a year, if possible, in order to help us continue to provide community events. Volunteer coordinators are happy to help sponsored athletes find volunteering opportunities to meet the requirements.

The SU requirements breakdown as follows:

·  B - Level Funding: 1 SU

·  A - Level Funding: 2 SU

·  A+ - Level Funding, road: 3 SU

·  A+ - Level Funding, track: 5 SU

·  Brooks High Performance Athletes: 2 SU*

*Those Brooks High Performance Athletes who also receive CNW Elite funding are expected to satisfy the service requirements for both.

Examples of ways to earn SU’s (and support our Club!):

• All-Comers (working a full meet is 2 SU, half a meet is 1 SU) - Reoccurring volunteers are the backbone of the All-Comers meets and we usually need about 6-8 additional volunteers per week. We are going to start having raffles for the volunteers. There’s also a small stipend for those that work 8 meets or more, and we are working on getting some CNW gear for those that work a set number of meets as well, but more to come on that. We will also have an end of season volunteer thank you get together as well. To volunteer for all comers, please contact Andie Roff at andieroff@gmail.com or Ben Iten at biten@g.hmc.edu. 

• Sunday Run Leaders (1 SU) - This is an easy way to volunteer for the club, and a lot of our current members come to us through these runs. They start at Super Jock and Jill at 8am, but the start location and time can always be modified to meet the run leader's schedule, as long as Andie knows in advance. To sign up for a run, either email Andie at andieroff@gmail.com or sign up here.

• Emerald City Open XC (course monitors 1 SU, finish line 1 SU, day before setup/raking 1 SU, day of setup 1 SU) - CNW puts this race on and has a need for many volunteers such as course monitors, finish line and more. 

• Winter Grand Prix (1 SU per job)  - A smaller series run December- February that needs a handful of volunteers on Saturday mornings. 

• Resolution run (1 SU per job) - A large community event and we usually need about 60 volunteers to help put this on. 

• Committees/Service Opportunities (TBD) - You don’t need to be on the board to help the club! Joining a committee is a great way to help make change and give back to the club. The committees are Membership, Teams, Events, Equity and Communications. Contact information for committee chairs can be found on our contact page.

Typically, 1 SU will be worth about 2-3 hours of work. Volunteer coordinators will have a database to track the SU’s, which will also be viewable to all members to keep track of their hours. 

We want volunteering to be a positive and fun experience and plan to have periodic prize raffles for those who have volunteered! As always, we welcome any feedback on how to help make volunteering more rewarding. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to Andie Roff at andieroff@gmail.com.