From Five Months to Match Day: How Volunteero Supported the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2026

Managing volunteers for a global tournament is no small task. With thousands of shifts to coordinate and fill, volunteers spread across the country, comprehensive pre-tournament training and a fast-paced delivery schedule, all of this requires the right system and support.

MoonShot was responsible for delivering the volunteer programme for the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2026. With five months until the opening match, Head of Volunteer Workforce Operations, Rose, and her team needed a platform that could be implemented quickly, support a fast-paced delivery schedule, and provide volunteers with a simple and intuitive experience. 

Rose used Volunteero to support different stages of the volunteer journey, from applications and managing in-person training, to volunteer communications, shift management, and on-the-ground coordination on match days. Read on to see how Volunteero helped facilitate the successful delivery of a global sporting event.

Designed for Simplicity 

With preparations well underway, and the tournament fast approaching, the team at MoonShot needed a volunteer management platform that could be implemented quickly and support a fast-paced delivery schedule. Rose reflected on the challenge, saying that “the key challenge coming in was the timeline. Volunteero was very easy, simple, and quick to set up, whereas other software and systems that I’ve used can take months on end to even get set up and ready”. 

The straightforward setup meant that the team could focus on recruiting and preparing volunteers rather than spending valuable time learning a complicated system. One feature that really stood out to Rose during the initial setup was Volunteer’s form builder. She described it as “super easy to use” and said that she “loved the drag and drop” functionality. Compared to systems she had used previously, Rose found the experience “refreshing and very simple”, helping the team build everything needed within the project’s tight timeframe.

Simple Shift Management 

As one of the world’s largest sporting tournaments, the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2026 requires thousands of volunteer shifts to be coordinated across multiple venues. Rather than assigning thousands of shifts manually, or relying on the system to run automatic shift assignments, which had its own set of challenges arising, Volunteero empowered volunteers to take control of their own volunteering, allowing volunteers to self-select shifts to suit their availability.

Over the course of the tournament, volunteers proactively claimed more than 3000 shifts, significantly reducing administration while giving the volunteer management team greater confidence in their staffing numbers. 

For Rose, this was a major advantage of Volunteero. Having managed volunteers at previous major sporting events, she explained that volunteer drop-off can often make planning difficult. Whether volunteers stopped engaging with the platform, don’t accept their role offer, or simply stop responding, organisers can find themselves planning around volunteers who are no longer committed to attending. 

Reflecting on the self-service approach, Rose said: 

“Having volunteers select shifts themselves, going back to the timescale, it’s a lot quicker because you don’t have to rely on the system running the automatic assignment, and volunteers know their availability." 

Instead of spending hours manually updating schedules, volunteers can easily leave or claim shifts as their availability changed, resulting in “a lot less time in the inbox”. She also noted that previous automatic shift assignment systems “weren’t always perfect” and often required manual corrections to “undo everything” afterwards.

Self-selected shifts also gave the team a clearer picture of volunteer engagement long before the tournament began. If a volunteer hadn’t claimed any shift, the team would immediately know that they weren’t actively participating, allowing them to plan with confidence.

During the tournament itself, venue volunteer leads could instantly see exactly who was expected at each shift, helping them to plan and adapt to any last minute changes that are inevitable at any major sporting event.

Keeping Everyone Connected

Managing volunteer communications before, during, and after a major international tournament can be a significant challenge. Ensuring volunteers have access to all the relevant information is essential to delivering a smooth event while helping volunteers feel informed, confident, and supported throughout their journey. 

Using Volunteero, the team combined the use of in-app chat, email broadcasts, and a comprehensive Knowledge Hub to keep volunteers up to date throughout the tournament. Rather than searching through emails or downloading multiple documents, volunteers could access everything needed in one place, including venue information, role guidance, and tournament updates.

Rose explained:

“Having everything consolidated into the app made life so much easier for volunteers, they didn’t have to keep searching through emails because everything was in one place”. 

The Knowledge Hub became a central source of information throughout the event, with volunteers describing the resources created by the MoonShot team as both useful and easy to navigate, while the MoonShot team benefited from having a single place to manage and update content. Additionally, the articles provided the foundation for Volunteero’s built-in AI Support Chat, allowing volunteers to receive answers based on the guidance created by the team. 

AI That Worked Around the Clock

As the tournament preparations intensified, Volunteero’s built-in AI Support Chat helped answer any volunteer queries around the clock, reducing pressures on the team while ensuring volunteers received immediate support. 

Rose described the AI feature as “super cool”, explaining that it “helped with the inbox” by providing  volunteers with quick responses whenever possible. Even when the AI couldn't fully answer a question, it still gave volunteers useful information while the team confirmed the final response. 

During the project, the AI assistant, affectionately named Willow, handled over 500 volunteer queries, achieving an impressive 90% satisfaction score from volunteers. This not only helped to free up valuable time for Rose and the wider team, but it also meant that volunteers could receive instant support, 24 hours a day.

Celebrating Volunteers in Real Time

Volunteer recognition remained an important part of the volunteering experience. Using Volunteero’s badge feature, Rose and the team were able to celebrate volunteer achievements without creating additional administration. 

Approximately 700 badges were awarded automatically, requiring no staff intervention, while over 1,400 additional badges were awarded by staff members across the tournaments. 

Venue Leads were encouraged to make the most out of the badges to recognise the great contributions throughout the event, creating an easy way to celebrate volunteers in real time. 

“We told the venue leaders to go crazy with badges. It meant we could recognise everyone who had done something amazing”. 

The response from the volunteers was incredibly positive. Rose highlighted how much the recognition meant to participants.

“A lot of volunteers were super grateful. They were sharing things like, ‘Oh I’m so happy with my badge on Volunteero’, it was super sweet. It was really nice for us to be able to give them out without limit”. 

By creating recognition simple, visible, and accessible, Volunteero helped the team celebrate volunteer contributions throughout the event and create a more rewarding experience for everyone involved.

Turning Volunteer Data into Actionable Insights

Following the tournament, Volunteero’s reporting tools helped the team to quickly gather meaningful insights without relying on spreadsheets. Rose highlighted the value of having key information available directly within the platform, making post-event reporting much more efficient:

“The insights have been really useful for my reporting. Being able to see a summary of tournament times, number of badges distributed, and collecting feedback and metrics from shifts was really valuable. The insights feature made it a lot easier to have everything within the system instead of doing it all on Excel”.

The data captured throughout the tournament demonstrated the incredible level of volunteer engagement: 

• 91% app engagement (1,059 out of the 1,160 accepted applicants actively engaged with the Volunteero app)

• An impressive 588,999 minutes of volunteering recorded (equivalent to one year, one months, and 13 days of volunteer time or 9,816 hours of volunteering)

• The most active volunteer contributed an incredible 4,433 minutes of volunteering (that's over 73 hours!)

• An average of 4.8 out/ 5 shift rating, reflecting the positive experience volunteers had throughout the event

By bringing the volunteer activity, feedback, and engagement data together in one place, Volunteero helped the team demonstrate the scale of the volunteer contribution and capture valuable insights for future events.

Delivering a successful tournament together 

Reflecting on the project, Rose described Volunteero as an intuitive platform that simplified volunteer management for both staff members and volunteers. She explained that “having everything within one system is super beneficial for the management side of volunteering”. 

Rose particularly valued the resources provided by the Volunteero team, including our own AI support tool, which allowed her to get answers quickly while working flexibly.. Being able to access support outside of traditional office hours helped her stay productive, while the knowledge base articles provided a useful refresher whenever she needed to revisit information from the implementation process.

Alongside these resources, Rose highlighted the level of support she received from the Volunteero team throughout the project. She described feeling “incredibly supported” and appreciated the team’s enthusiasm and commitment to the tournament's success: “you could feel the [Volunteero team’s] excitement for the project as well. It’s been super nice and it definitely feels like kind of a team mentality, working together to deliver an incredible project, an incredible tournament".

Overall, from the quick implementation and streamlined volunteer communication, to    self-claiming shift bookings, accessible resources and powerful reporting, Volunteero supported MoonShot in successfully delivering the volunteer programme for one of the world’s biggest cricket tournaments. 

If you would like to learn more about how Volunteero can help your organisation, please feel free to book a demo.