Keeping your volunteers happy

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

This is the forth in a five part series on volunteers.

Volunteers are critical to festival success

According to Julie Hodges from the National Folk Festival in Canberra, “Demonstrating appreciation of the volunteers’ contribution to the festival, keeping them ‘happy’, and more importantly retaining their dedication towards the Festival are critical.”

“Volunteer evaluation is also integral for management to understand volunteer experiences at future festivals, so that necessary changes can be incorporated into the volunteer program to ensure the festival’s continued success.” (Australian Jornal on Volunteering, August 1998)

http://www.volunteeringaustralia.org/files/3U8IZNH3MQ/Hodges%20p22%20v3%202%2098.pdf

Be good to them

Keeping your volunteers happy is often as simple as looking after their human needs (food, drink, shelter) combined with a heartfelt thank you for all of their hard work.

But many event organisers neglect this crucial aspect of managing volunteers and find themselves struggling to find volunteers each year.

Why do I want volunteers to come back?

Much the same as paid employees, it is far cheaper in terms of money spent advertising positions and time spent on training, to retain volunteers from one year to the next.

Not only that, but when the same group of people come together each year to represent an event you create a great family feel that spreads to the whole of the event.

So if you want to keep your volunteers coming back year after year, you might want to think about some bigger and better ways of showing your appreciation.

Top tips for keeping volunteers happy

It is always important to keep your volunteers fed and watered. But there are other ways to let them know you care:

• Give them free merchandise
• Negotiate volunteer discounts with sponsors
• Include a shout out to volunteers as part of the days speeches

Volunteering Australia have put together a number of ways to recognise volunteers:

• give a certificate to commemorate anniversaries of involvement
• Take photos of volunteers on the job, imprint a 'Thank you' message, frame the image, then give them to each volunteer
• Hold special 'thank you' or social functions in honour of volunteers.

For more information visit: http://www.volunteeringaustralia.org/html/s02_article/article_view.asp?art_id=2573&nav_cat_id=229&nav_top_id=67