We’re delighted to announce that Andrew Farrow, our Admin and Membership Secretary, has won the 2012 Dacorum Sports Award for Volunteer of the Year.
Andrew spends more than 15 hours per week managing all aspects of admin and membership (despite having a full-time job up in London). In addition to managing all data about swimmers, this year he has created a superb New Joiners Pack with everything new swimmers need to know about the Club; he meets every new joiner and their parents for a one-to-one initial consultation, making sure they understand everything they need to know.
Andrew has been responsible until just recently for creating and uploading our competition events schedule into the club website and single-handedly manages all our email communication to nearly 300 members. This has transformed how we communicate with our members and saves us having to write to everyone by ‘snail mail’, as well as saving us money. His tone and writing style has this year become more and more engaging and he often manages to inject humour, as well as provide detailed and informative communication to the membership about forthcoming events, etc.
Andrew is also responsible for our electronic meet timing equipment (AOE) operation during our many internal and external galas. He now has a team to help set up and run the starter, Meet Manager software, pads and timing buttons and has fully documented what is a fairly archaic system to reduce the risk of failure. When we decided to move to an impressive full 6-lane scoreboard, Andrew conducted the research and secured us a great deal with a supplier, saving us several thousand pounds. He then supervised the installation which went on past midnight due to the installers’ late arrival at SportSpace. Andrew is also a fully qualified timekeeper and when not supervising the AOE is often to be found timekeeping at the pool during an event.
Andrew oversees other volunteers who manage our ASA membership and fees and who also manage all the entries for our galas, which have to be input into Meet Manager. He was recently able to work out how to get Meet Manager to communicate with an ‘app’ that allows our parents and swimmers to see real-time results on their iPad or iPhone during a meet, rather than having to wait until the heats are finished and the results posted up on the wall. He works closely with the Treasurer, ensuring the Direct Debit scheme we operate is accurate and keeping track of the membership on a monthly basis. At our monthly committee meetings he is always well informed, helpful and yet is fully grounded in the members’ needs. He assisted again this year with the AGM, providing the minutes in the Secretary’s absence. He has two children who swim at the club, Becky and Jonny, not to mention his wife, Louise, who is our events co-ordinator (and he helps her out behind the scenes quite a bit too).
{phocagallery view=switchimage|basicimageid=1395|switchheight=400|switchwidth=300|switchfixedsize=0}