I was nine years old the first time I umpired a baseball game.

I should be clear about what that means, because it would be easy to make it sound grander than it was. I was not running anything at nine. I was a kid in a borrowed chest protector, learning the rules a half-inning ahead of the players, finding out early what it feels like when a grown adult decides you are the problem with their afternoon.

What happened after that was slow. I kept umpiring. Eventually I was the one training the new umpires, then the one assigning them, then the one defending them. Somewhere in there a club needed a treasurer and nobody else put their hand up. Then a board seat. Then, because I had read the bylaws once and that apparently qualifies you, the chair’s job at an AGM.

That is the honest shape of it: thirty years of being in the room, not thirty years of running the room. I mention it because the people I work with are usually somewhere on that same path — handed a job they did not train for, doing it anyway.

These days I am a Certified Professional Bookkeeper and — currently and most humblingly — a parent of two kids in more programs than I can comfortably keep track of.

What I noticed over those years is that the same handful of problems turn up everywhere, in every sport, and in organizations that have nothing to do with sport at all. The hospital auxiliary and the lacrosse league have the same conversation about volunteers. The riding association and the ball club have the same gap in their financial controls. Nobody is doing anything wrong. They are doing an unpaid job that nobody ever gave them a system for.

The financial side is my professional ground — that one I am formally qualified for. The rest of it — the officials, the volunteers, the AGMs, the families who quietly do not come back — I learned the way you are learning it. By doing it, occasionally badly, for a long time.

What I actually believe

Volunteers are not the problem

Nearly every organization that tells me nobody wants to help has an unbounded-role problem, not a willingness problem. People say no to open-ended, undefined commitments, which is a sensible thing to do. They say yes to two hours at a raffle table with a sheet explaining how it works.

Most fraud is not sophisticated

It is one trusted person with access nobody questioned, in a role nobody else understood, over a period of years. It is preventable with controls that are genuinely boring to implement. The hard part is not the controls. The hard part is asking a board to imagine that someone they like might do this.

Recruitment is usually a retention problem in disguise

This is true of officials, of volunteers, and of member families. If you are recruiting harder every year and standing still, adding to the top of the funnel is not the fix. I would rather help you close the hole than help you pour faster.

The work should end

You should not need me on retainer. Every engagement ends with a document you own, that your board can act on without me in the room, and that still makes sense to whoever replaces you in two years.

Background

• Since age 9Umpiring Little League baseball and softball — then training, assigning and supervising the umpires
• Officials20+ years supervising, assigning, training and managing sports officials
• Finance10+ years as treasurer of sports organizations; Certified Professional Bookkeeper
• GovernanceAGMs run for a provincial riding association, a hospital auxiliary, the BC Junior A Lacrosse League and the BC JB T1 Lacrosse League
• AlsoParent, two kids, several sports, one minivan

What I am not

I am not a CPA, and I do not perform audits or review engagements — those are assurance services restricted to CPAs in public practice. I am not a lawyer, and I do not give legal advice. When your situation needs either one, I will say so plainly and help you get ready for that conversation rather than pretending I can replace it.