Volunteering
Our Essex Tennis vision
Tennis is a game for all ages, abilities and backgrounds and we aim to grow tennis in Essex by making it relevant, accessible, inclusive, safe, welcoming and enjoyable.
County Volunteering
At Essex Tennis we embrace the principles of openness and diversity as core values, fostering an inclusive environment where individuals from all backgrounds are welcomed and empowered to contribute their unique perspectives, talents, and experiences.
A key part of that is encouraging volunteers from across the County to become involved in Essex Tennis, whether that be supporting our work maintaining contact with Clubs, supporting our County teams and coaching programme, sitting on one of our Teams (such as Competitions, Finance, Governance or Awards) or sitting on our Essex Tennis Council.
We are keen to hear from anybody who would like to be involved, just contact the Essex Tennis Office and they will know who best to speak to you about your chosen area of interest.
Club/Venue Volunteering
Most venues simply wouldn’t be able to run without the support and enthusiasm of volunteers. There are many ways you can get involved and enjoy making a difference in your local community.
Many volunteer roles don’t even require tennis playing experience, including committee roles (such as chair, secretary, treasurer, welfare officer, competition organiser, groundsperson, IT/web volunteer) and ad-hoc/informal roles such as supporting competitions, events and open days.
In fact, Britain’s courts have more than 25,000 people volunteering their time throughout the year, opening tennis up across the country.
It’s vital that our volunteers are supported, from recruitment and training through to how they’re recognised and retained…
The LTA have launched a short online module that helps people to understand what opportunities are available to volunteers in tennis and where they can get support.
Access the information and welcome video from LTA Volunteering Manager, Alex Beaumont, by clicking here.
There is also a huge amount of advice and support available both on our Essex Tennis website and the LTA website, where a whole section is dedicated to becoming/being a tennis volunteer. This link takes you straight there:
https://www.lta.org.uk/roles-and-venues/volunteers/become-a-tennis-volunteer/
Tennis Volunteer Facebook Community Group
This is a community Facebook group for anyone who volunteers within a tennis venue including tennis clubs, parks, universities and schools.
It is a friendly, safe and open platform to share ideas, knowledge and best practice and to ask and answer questions relating to the running tennis activities/venues. The community is managed by a team of volunteer Community Champions.
Supporting and retaining volunteers
Volunteering should be fun and made to be as easy as possible – and part of this is ensuring you have the right training and support resources in place.
It’s also important that your volunteers feel valued – and recognising excellence is one way to do this, either formally or informally.
The LTA Tennis Awards are a great way to show your recognition of key volunteers in your club or in our county. Nominations open in October every year, with nominations normally closing at the end of November. This link will tell you more about how you can recognise tennis volunteers via the LTA Awards scheme:
https://www.lta.org.uk/about-us/what-we-do/lta-tennis-awards/
Also look out for National Volunteers Week. The LTA run a scheme and we also run a local equivalent in Essex. If you feel someone deserves a ‘thank you’ then this is a great chance to have that recognised across the Essex Tennis community.