MOBILIZING A VOLUNTEER TEAM
Recruitment
Your Mini Maker Faire event is going to require a labor force beyond the size of your leadership team. One of your leadership team roles will necessarily be event volunteer manager. This person’s job is to work with the logistics team and the executive producer to identify the volunteer jobs, and then to promote and badger until he or she gets those slots filled.
Remember beyond sheer numbers, you’ll also need some area leaders. area Leaders can help an overloaded leadership team members stay more available on the day-of the event. Examples: registration, tents, electrical, parking, clean up. Try and recruit these folks in advance.
Incentives help to recruit volunteers. If your Mini Maker Faire costs money, free tickets to the event is the obvious choice. Articulate how many hours of volunteering equal how many free tickets. Otherwise, swag (t-shirts, stickers, Make Magazines) or donated gift certificates can work too.
Publicize the Call for Volunteers through every means necessary: Facebook, newsletters, Twitter, craigslist, newspapers, radio. Emails to individuals connected directly to your sponsoring organization(s) are likely to produce the most sign-ups. Ask your current volunteers to reach out themselves.
If you like, get volunteers to sign an agreement. (See Volunteer Agreement below.) You don’t want people to flake out at the last minute; signing an agreement can help to lfilter the flakes in advance.
Train your volunteers. Gather them before the event to go over expectations, rules, the site plan, and the safety plan.
Identify your volunteers with badges/credentials or t-shirts.
Lastly, after your event, celebrate your volunteers! Throw a pizza party, hand out swag, honor them in your blog.
HINT: WeJoinIn.com and Jooners.com are easy, free, online sign-up sheet tools designed for this very purpose. Create an “event” and promote the link. Volunteers can sign-up online. Here are some sample, super simple WeJoinIn.com sign-up sheets from our 2010 East Bay Mini Maker Faire:
Communication
No matter what way you get them to commit (sign-up sheet or agreement), you’ll need their email address and mobile phone number so that you can be in-touch with Volunteers both before and during the event.
Have a clear process and check-in location for volunteers at your Faire (this is important also so the manager can re-distribute labor as needed). Give them t-shirts or badges or some other identifying mark. Remember to thank them afterward, and offer them a survey or some other feedback mechanism for comments and suggestions.
Do your best to empower volunteers! Some of the jobs will require some training and orientation, or at least lists of tasks. Area managers should be able to make these task lists and/or articulate processes. They also are the ones to lead orientations.
Areas that should definitely have some orientation/pre-articulated processes: