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Did You Know?

• Over 43,000 people volunteer to support grassroots rugby in England.  They volunteer in clubs, schools, colleges and universities.  Their freely given time and effort enables over 500,000 people to play our sport.  Through their hard work hundreds of thousands of children enjoy healthy exercise and learn teamwork.
  
• Rugby clubs, on average, have 36 volunteers.
  
• Since England won the Webb Ellis Cup in November 2003 an additional 11,578 people, an increase of over 35%, are giving their skills and time freely to rugby.
  
• More than half of rugby volunteers are aged between 25 and 44.  Over 2,000 volunteers are aged 16-24.
  
• In 2002, figures showed that volunteers give 4,945 hours a year to their rugby club, worth (at minimum wage rates) over Ј22,000 to each club.  The average hours per week spent volunteering at clubs during the season is 123 hrs.  This equates to 4,872,758 volunteer hours in total.
  
• Over 400 clubs have a Volunteer Co-ordinator who receives regular newsletters and can access resources such as Kick Off, On-side, Step 5 and Pitch In.  They help
  
• Over 19% of rugby club volunteers are women.
  
• In July 2005, a specially commissioned independent survey of the rugby workforce at 91 clubs from levels 3-11 found:
  
  88.7% of the rugby workforce are volunteers.  
  
  87.9% say that volunteers are effective in delivering clubs aims and objectives.  There was no relationship between how effective a club is and whether they have paid employees.
  
  77% of clubs have some form of reward to acknowledge the contribution of volunteers
  
• In 2006, rugby volunteers gave over 8.5 million hours to the sport.  At average hourly wage rates this over Ј106 million.