Setting Up Roles for Your Committee and Volunteers

Most venues start with one person who set up Tidewell and therefore holds the keys to everything. That works until the treasurer needs to issue a refund on a Saturday, or the person with the keys moves to another city. Roles fix both problems.

The roles most venues need

• Admin for one or two people who manage settings, billing and other people's roles. Keep this list short.
• Bookings secretary for whoever approves room hire, settles clashes and edits the calendar.
• Treasurer for payments, refunds and the finance reports, without access to booking rules.
• Rota coordinator for building shifts and seeing who has swapped what.
• Host for volunteers who open up, sign people in and record inductions.

Anyone can hold more than one role, which is normal in a small club where the secretary is also the treasurer and, now and then, the person mopping the floor.

Give people the smallest role that works

It's tempting to make every committee member an admin so nobody ever has to ask. Resist it. When a setting changes unexpectedly, a short admin list makes it much easier to work out what happened, and a well-meaning volunteer can't switch off your cancellation window by accident.

Plan the handover before the AGM

Committees change every year, and access often doesn't. A few weeks before your AGM, open the Roles page and check who still holds what. Add the incoming officers first, let them shadow for a week or two, then remove the outgoing ones. Every change is recorded in the activity log, so if a question comes up later you can see who granted what and when.