Everything you need to run volunteers for your race, from course setup to race-day check-in.
Eight animated steps that walk you through your first event, start to finish.
Each organiser has their own account — create one with an email and password, or continue with Google. Everything you build (events, course points, volunteers, briefs) is private to your account: no other organiser can see or edit your races. Your volunteers still don't need an account, and the sign-up and brief links you share stay publicly accessible. A sample event is installed for you to poke around in — it's marked Demo and never counts towards your figures.
You don't have to share one login. In Settings, invite a colleague into your account and they get full access to your events, volunteers and briefs. Anyone working across more than one organiser's account gets an account switcher in the top bar, so it's always clear whose race you're looking at. Owners can remove access in one tap, and members can leave at any time.
From the home screen, create an event with its date, location and branding. Inside the event, open the Course tab and add each race (distance, start time, expected paces), then upload its GPX file — the route appears on the map automatically. No route file? Tick “no GPX” for swims, triathlon legs or laps of a field. Races can be deleted later, and any course points linked to them are tidied up for you.
Click anywhere on the map to place a marshal point, junction, aid station, registration desk, medical post, car park — whatever position types you use. Points near a race route are auto-linked with the correct km marker. Drag a pin to move it, or click it to edit runner notes, a what3words address, WhatsApp group link and location link. Each point also takes parking information (where to park, what permit to display, when the car park closes) plus walking directions from the car park to the position — both print straight onto that marshal's brief, which is the single biggest cause of race-morning phone calls.
Already planned your course somewhere else? Use Import points to bring it all in at once: paste a Google My Maps link and every pin is pulled in (pins labelled “marshal”, “aid station” and so on are classified automatically), upload a CSV of names and coordinates, upload a GPX/KML file of waypoints, or paste a list of what3words addresses. You get a preview table to fix names and types before anything is created, and your event defaults (parking link, shift times, headcount) are applied to every new point.
In the Shifts tab, add shifts to each course point with a role, start/end time and required headcount. The timing windows shown for each point are calculated from race paces, so you know when runners will actually pass through. Shifts don't have to end at a fixed time — choose a release condition instead (“stay until the cycle back marker passes you”) and the brief shows that alongside an estimated finish. Drag shifts into the order you want and that exact order is what volunteers see on the sign-up form. Edit a shift in place at any time without losing the people already on it, and use the Shift Assistant to spot gaps and overlaps.
CrewMate AI is one click away on every organiser screen. Ask it anything about your event, or hand it a job: audit my setup, create the missing shifts, sort out my zones, build my sign-up form, set up my brief layout, research my event online. It always tells you exactly what it's about to change before making a bulk change, never deletes anything unless you ask, and every job it does is logged so you can undo the whole thing in one tap. It only ever sees the events and volunteers belonging to your account.
On a big event a single list of a hundred points becomes unusable. In the Course tab, create zones — On Route, Event Village, Start / Finish, or whatever your event calls them — give each one a colour, and set a zone on each point when you edit it (or select several points in Tidy up mode and drop them into a zone at once). Zones are also where you write things once: each zone holds its own briefing copy, meet and briefing location, arrival window, walk-out instructions, vehicle restrictions and parking detail, and every point in the zone inherits it onto its briefs — override a single point only where something is genuinely different. The zone chips filter the map, points list, shifts, roster and race-day board together, so on the morning you can work through one zone at a time.
When a shift is full, your public sign-up form offers “Full — join waitlist” instead of hiding it, so nobody who wants to help is turned away. As soon as a spot frees up — someone drops out, or you mark a no-show — a Spot open alert appears at the top of your Roster with the queue for that shift, ordered for you: volunteers happy to take any shift first, anyone who has already turned a spot down last, then by when they joined. Offer spot moves that person into the shift and opens WhatsApp with the offer ready to send, and it's logged in your message history. A “no thanks” sends them to the back of the queue rather than off it. Waitlisted people never count towards your fill figures, so coverage and reports stay honest.
In the Forms tab, design the questions volunteers answer when they sign up — short text, dropdowns, checkboxes, consent boxes, file uploads and conditional questions that only appear when relevant. The builder shows each question as volunteers will see it, with simple on/off and required toggles. The standard questions (email, dietary and medical notes, emergency contact, experience) each have their own switch in Settings, so you only ask for what you need, and you can set your own word for “volunteer” — Marshal, Crew, Helper — which replaces it across the form and waiver. Every form is versioned: each submission stores the exact questions that volunteer was shown.
Share your public sign-up link (from the event header) — volunteers register themselves, choose a shift or tick “open to any shift”. Shifts are grouped under your zones with a live count of open positions, and each has a Preview so regulars can recognise their usual spot. Run clubs can sign up as a group: whoever registers first adds their club mates inline, and you can drop a whole club onto a shift from the roster in one go. List your perks in Settings (free t-shirt, hot food, free entry next year) and they appear at the top of the form, which is the cheapest way to lift sign-ups. In the Roster tab, assign volunteers to shifts, pull from the flexible pool to fill gaps, or switch to the spreadsheet view and paste rows straight in from Google Sheets or Excel. One volunteer can hold several shifts across the day, and you're warned if two of them clash.
Every volunteer you add or who signs up joins your own volunteer pool, shown under “Volunteer pool”. It's yours across all your events, so next season you don't start from an empty roster: open an event, choose Add from pool, and tick the people you want back. Add people manually at any time (handy for the ones who only ever text you), import a spreadsheet, or fix a typo in a name, number or email straight from the pool — changes carry through to the roster and their brief immediately. Remove someone from one event without losing them from your pool, and undo if you slip.
Each assignment gets a personalised brief: a map with a “you stand here” pin, timing windows, instructions, where to report and when to arrive, parking and access notes, contacts, your road closure notice and a QR code. In the Brief Template editor you can drag panels into the order you want, hide the ones you don't need, set header and accent colours, logo position, map height, contact number size and a footer note — then print or download all briefs in one batch as a PDF. Pick any single point in the editor to tweak just that point's brief, such as dropping the timing panel from a race-hub position. Every brief is versioned, so you can see exactly what each marshal was sent.
A full A4 brief is what volunteers read the night before; it's not what they want blowing about in the rain. Switch any brief — or a whole event's briefs — to Lanyard cards and you get compact credit-card-sized cards that tile several to a page with cut lines: name, position, role, shift times or release condition, and the emergency and radio details. Print, slice, and drop them into lanyard wallets at volunteer check-in.
The WhatsApp tab lets you message volunteers by segment (role, location, status), apply one group invite link to the whole event or a different one per point, and draft an event summary or group broadcast in a click. You open each chat yourself so nothing is ever sent in your name without you seeing it, and mrshl ticks off who you've already messaged. After the race, the thank-you composer gives everyone who turned out a personal message with their position and hours, and the Run club free entry panel offers each club volunteer next year's entry. Every campaign is logged.
Email is built in — open the Email tab on any event. Four emails go out automatically, sent from your event's logo and colours: thanks for signing up the moment someone registers, a confirmation prompt four weeks out, everything-for-the-day ten days out (their position, shift times, arrival window, where to report, parking, road closures and their own brief link), and a thank-you the day after. Edit the wording, change the timings, switch any stage off, send yourself a test copy, or send one now. You can also broadcast to any filtered group with an inbox preview, save your own templates for reuse on every event, and see a send-history grid of exactly who received what.
Export a single column of codes from your registration platform — any platform — and upload it to the event as a CSV or Excel file. Blanks and duplicates are dropped, and uploading again tops the pool up. Tap Allocate and every volunteer gets their own unique code; if you haven't uploaded enough, mrshl tells you exactly how many more you need. Switch on “Use my uploaded codes” and the post-event thank-you email carries each volunteer's own code. Prefer one shared code? Leave the switch off and type it in.
On race day, use the Status Board on your phone to check volunteers in, flag no-shows and watch coverage in real time — status changes are instant, and any understaffed shift is highlighted. The Insights page in the top menu shows how staffing is really going: fill gauges per event, staffing by zone weakest first, critical points with nobody on them, a race-day countdown with the sign-ups per day you now need, experience mix, run-club dependency and how this event compares with your account average. Afterwards, the Reports tab shows fill rates, volunteer hours and repeat volunteers.
In the Settings tab, upload your event logo and set your accent colour (both carry through to sign-up pages and marshal briefs), upload your road closure / traffic management notice so every marshal has it on them, and set your emergency contact, radio channel, event-wide WhatsApp link, volunteer perks, waiver text and the role and position types you use. Defaults save the most time: set a standard shift start and end (or release condition), headcount and parking link once, and every new point you create is pre-built with a shift ready to fill. When the race is done, clone the whole event — course points, shifts and roles — for next year in one click.