For race directors
The volunteer side of your race management platform: course positions, sign-ups, shifts, personal marshal briefs and race-day check-in. mrshl helps you plan the crew alongside your participant registration and timing tools, without pretending to replace them.
Tell us about your next race. We’ll show you how to bring your volunteer operations together.
Leave your details and we’ll get in touch to show you how mrshl could work for your team.
A race director volunteer platform is software that manages the volunteer side of an endurance event: course positions, shifts, sign-ups, personalised marshal briefs, communication and race-day check-in. Unlike general volunteer tools, it ties every person to a mapped point on the route, so staffing gaps on the course are visible before race morning.
The difference is not features, it is whether volunteers are attached to your course. Categories below are generic — most organisers are currently in column one.
| Capability | Spreadsheets & group chats | Generic volunteer sign-up tools | A race director volunteer platform |
|---|---|---|---|
| Volunteers tied to course positions | Manual tabs per point, drifts from the map | Roles and time slots only, no course | Every shift sits on a mapped point on the route |
| Marshal briefs | Copy, paste and rename per person | Not produced | Generated per volunteer, print-ready, versioned |
| Runner arrival times per point | Hand-calculated, redone when the route changes | Not supported | Computed from GPX distance and pace bands |
| Race-morning check-in | Clipboard, gaps found late | Attendance list, no course view | Live board showing any unmanned point |
| Volunteer comms | Group chats, no record of who was told | Bulk email only | Segmented, personalised, every message logged |
| Returning volunteers | Rebuilt from last year's file by hand | Locked inside each campaign | One pool across every event, with role tags |
| Waivers and consent | A tick box with no wording stored | Generic consent text | Exact wording each volunteer accepted, stored per person |
Concrete capability, no adjectives.
The same sequence whether you are staffing a 5k or a 100km ultra across 18 hours.
01
Import your GPX or paste a spreadsheet of positions, then drop a pin for every junction, crossing, aid station and event village role.
02
Share one public sign-up link, pull returning volunteers from your pool, and fill each point's shifts — with a waitlist when one is full.
03
Generate a personalised one-page brief per person: their point on a map, arrival and release times, parking, contacts and group link.
04
Check volunteers in from your phone and watch any unmanned point flag itself while there is still time to reshuffle.
Choose the right tools, bring your spreadsheet across and plan cover for long events.
Software guide · 5 min
Race management software: registration, timing or volunteers?
ReadPlanning guide · 4 min
Moving your race volunteer spreadsheet into software
ReadEndurance operations · 4 min
Planning volunteer shifts for an endurance event
ReadNo. It covers volunteer operations: recruitment, course positions, shifts, briefing and check-in. Participant entries, payments, timing and published results remain with your other race management tools. A shared workflow does not mean an automatic integration.
mrshl is built for endurance-event volunteer teams, rather than every type of event. It focuses on course-point staffing and marshal instructions, not conference ticketing, exhibitor management or venue booking.
It is software that runs the volunteer side of a race: course positions, shifts, sign-ups, marshal briefs, comms and race-day check-in. The defining feature is that volunteers are attached to mapped points on the route rather than to abstract roles, so you can see which part of the course is unstaffed.
General tools manage people and time slots. A race director platform manages a course: it imports your GPX, places positions on it, calculates when runners reach each one, generates a brief per volunteer, and shows unmanned points live on race morning. None of that exists in generic sign-up software.
Yes. mrshl has a spreadsheet view with inline editing, and you can paste your existing volunteer list straight in from Excel or Google Sheets. Course points can be imported from a spreadsheet, GPX, KML or what3words addresses.
No. Volunteers sign up through a mobile web form using one public link, and receive a link to their own brief. There is nothing to install and no account to create.
Yes. Multi-lap courses, two-way sections, several race distances sharing a course, and legs with no GPX at all (such as a swim) are all supported, each with its own start time and pace bands.
Marshal numbers come from the shape of the course — decision points, crossings, splits and aid stations — not from runner numbers. mrshl holds a required headcount per point and flags anything short, so the gap between what you planned and what you have staffed is always visible.
Yes. Upload your approved road closure notice once and it is linked from every marshal brief, and your volunteer waiver text is stored per event with a snapshot of the exact wording each volunteer accepted.
Start with your course and crew, not another spreadsheet to maintain. Explore the setup yourself or talk it through with us.
£24 per event when your first volunteer signs up or is added. No subscription. Email sending extra, at cost.