Bring Out The Best in Volunteers
Tips For Recruiting, Training, Rewarding And Retaining Unpaid Event Staff
By Marcia Bradford
Depending on personal experience, the term volunteer can conjure up widely divergent ideas—from overly serious to overly attentive, and everything in between. According to Florence May, owner of Indianapolis and Boston-based Simply Hospitality, volunteers should be regarded as an important resource that needs to be properly trained by event managers. “There are many ways of looking at volunteers,” she said. “Event managers tend to see them as people to whom certain tasks can be assigned and try to figure out the types of incentives needed to attract them. Executive directors and CEOs tend to ask how much the volunteers are going to cost them.”
The question of cost is actually an important consideration, May said. Even though we tend to think of volunteers as “free help,” the fact is that most of them will at least expect a T-shirt as a reward for their efforts. Other costs of using volunteers might include badges, postage, parking, food and complimentary tickets to the event. Additionally, volunteers are often managed by paid staff or an outside consultant. “There is always a cost involved with volunteers,” she said. “So it is both appropriate and necessary to determine the return on the investment when you use volunteers.”
May, whose company has managed large groups of volunteers for eight years, developed registration and event management software that includes a volunteer management module. The TRS volunteer product is based on her team’s experience and the “best practices” of many other companies for which she has consulted.
May’s first big event was managing the local organizing committee for the Formula One U.S. Grand Prix racing event in 2000, the first year it came to Indianapolis. “One of our first challenges was to find several thousand volunteers who spoke multiple languages—not an easy task in most Midwest cities.”
The inaugural racing event was a big success for Indianapolis—drawing 230,000 guests from around the world, involving 2,600 volunteers who spoke six different languages, and requiring security clearance at some venues. Since then, May has implemented her TRS volunteer software to support hundreds of homegrown events ranging from the Carmel Dad’s Club, Mt. Comfort Youth Sports and the Indiana Senior Games to large events like the Veterans Affairs Golden Age Games, AAU Junior Olympics and 2009 Super Bowl in Tampa Bay, Fla. Along the way, she has gained expert insight from her volunteer management clients.
“These are not just my ideas, these are the ‘best practices’ shared by the best volunteer managers in the country,” she said. “I take these tips to new clients and event planners who want to grow a strong volunteer program.”
For example, May recommends that event managers spend less time on administrative work (her software is designed to streamline those tasks) and more time identifying and defining the roles of volunteers. “Volunteers need to have job descriptions,” she said. The descriptions may be as basic as “sit at information desk,” to “greet attendees,” or they might be more detailed, such as “youth activities counselor for children of competing athletes.”
Lisa Rix, assistant director at the National Institute for Fitness and Sport in Indianapolis, has been involved with both sides of the volunteer spectrum as a manager of volunteers for many years at her job and as a volunteer in other area events, including the Indianapolis Tennis Championships and AT&T Outdoor Track & Field Championships. She said it is very important to match the right person to the right job. “Volunteers should not be allowed to sign up for positions they are not suited for,” she said. “Also, make sure all volunteer positions are actually meaningful and necessary. Make sure the volunteers don’t get bored during slow times. They should be reassigned or allowed to leave.”
Additionally, Rix has observed that people volunteer for different reasons. Some want to make a difference, others enjoy the social aspects, and others still need to fulfill volunteer requirements for their church, workplace, school or social organization. “Be sensitive to people’s reasons for volunteering,” she said. “If the volunteer is interested in social contact, for example, he or she should be teamed up with someone rather than being stationed alone.”
When matching volunteers to certain tasks, make sure you cover the basics, May said. “Be clear about when people are expected to be on the job and when they can leave. Volunteers usually want to know exactly what they are expected to do and how long they are expected to be there. Volunteering gets a bad name when you don’t manage expectations.”
She also cautioned that some jobs—like security, sanitation and handling heavy materials—should not be delegated to volunteers.
Training Improves Performance
In most situations, May recommends that organizations conduct volunteer training sessions. “If you can bring the volunteers together and educate them about the event, you will help them perform better,” she said. “Volunteers need to know what will happen at the event, why it’s coming to town, who the participants are. We’ve all been to events where the volunteers don’t know where anything is, and it’s not their fault; they weren’t properly trained.”
This lesson was brought home for May, she said, during the first year of the Grand Prix event, when she had to explain to volunteers the difference between a Formula One race and the Indianapolis 500. Conversely, she witnessed firsthand the excitement that can be generated from a local athlete briefing a group of volunteers for a lacrosse tournament, for example. “They were a very motivated group that day because they became experts,” she said.
Unfortunately, event managers are likely to encounter a few problems with volunteers now and then, May acknowledged. Bad behaviors, ranging from irritating and inappropriate conduct to potentially dangerous actions, need to be identified and dealt with promptly, she said. Some of the best ways of handling these situations are to tactfully re-assign a volunteer, to reinforce any good behavior the person has demonstrated and, if necessary, to have the person causing problems removed from the premises by an appropriate authority. “A good approach is to pull the volunteer aside and say, ‘Maybe I did not do a good job of training you for this task, so let me find you a job that would be more suitable.’”
Recruiting & Retaining Volunteers
According to May, those with an affiliation to the event make the best potential volunteers. For example, if you are managing a softball tournament, seek out parents of kids in the local softball leagues, and then expand to the area civic clubs like Rotary, Kiwanis and the Optimists.
To achieve the highest rates of retention, May and Rix agreed that it’s important to meet volunteers’ expectations and recognize their efforts. “A free T-shirt or tickets to the event can go a long way, but even more important is the sincere, personal ‘thank you’ from the event organizers whenever possible,” Rix said. “A nice touch would be to have a thank-you from a city leader, explaining how much the volunteer efforts were appreciated. Or, on a bigger scale, have an athlete or celebrity thank the volunteers.”
“When people are considering whether to volunteer for the next event, they usually think about how well they were treated and whether the effort was worth their time,” May said. “Volunteers need to feel that they are appreciated or they won’t want to help out again.”