ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the key issues influencing the development of volunteer coaches and provides a summary of the core principles required to effectively develop and manage the important cohort of volunteers. It focuses on volunteer coaches who are most likely to coach junior sport at the community/recreational level. Most volunteer coaches tend to engage with youth/children in community level programmes. There is little doubt therefore that volunteer coaches are crucial to the sport sector and understanding the factors that influence their recruitment and retention is essential to ensuring the long term sustainability of sport, especially for youth programmes at the community/grass-roots level. Coaches, like almost every other category of sport volunteer, are subject to the same global and organisational trends impacting on all volunteers. The increasing demand for micro- and virtual volunteering opportunities is likely to disproportionally impact on the availability and commitment of volunteer coaches.
