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Tag: Event Management

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5 Easy Steps to create a ‘Lived Vision’ to Effectively Engage Stakeholders

Bringing a large-scale event to life that truly reflects your vision will always require buy-in from the various stakeholders involved. It can be very time intensive to manage competing stakeholders when running large-scale events and it can feel like you are being pulled in several different directions.

In this post you I’ll show you five easy steps to create a “lived vision” that will help pull everyone together and ensure that you get the best outcome for your event without always having to communicate separately with each stakeholder group.

Related content: Do you really know your event stakeholders?

Now, having a vision for your event is surely nothing new to you; however, having a lived vision is a step further. As the name implies, a lived vision is known and lived by all stakeholders. It also helps to easily attract more of the right people to your event – those who truly connect to your vision, and hence saves you valuable time while creating a bigger impact.

Managing competing stakeholder interests

Mitigating the great challenge of competing stakeholder interests means getting stakeholders to all work together towards your event’s success. Yes, they are all very different but the one thing that unites them is your vision for your event or organisation.

It is also much easier to manage these competing interests when you have your own cheer squad – or “A-team” of stakeholder ambassadors who share the vision for your event and can hence carry it through to their respective stakeholder groups. 

Creating an “A team” with vision

The easiest way to create your own A-team is to share openly and honestly the vision you have for your event. For example, if you are running an event benefitting health, you will want to use language that is attractive to stakeholders who share a common interest in healthy communities.

This way you will pull together a small group of people across all stakeholder groups, who are most enthusiastic about your event. They will see their involvement as more than a transaction and they will help you engage all stakeholders. See them as your advisory panel and your cheer squad.

Regardless of the type of event or its purpose, your entire team will function more cohesively when united by common goals, and the same goes for all stakeholder groups. This calls for a clearly spelled-out vision at the centre of all your event planning, around which your A-team will rally and take everyone else along for the ride. Do this early!

Your event’s vision statement

Write up a single vision statement for your event. Leverage this vision statement to engage potential stakeholders around the common interest. Use this vision statement as the basis for a “pull strategy” designed to attract stakeholders who share your vision.

Often, event leaders create different visions for each stakeholder group, such as sponsors, staff, suppliers, volunteers. This segmentation limits the stakeholders. However, a well-articulated vision attracts people across all stakeholder groups to your event and you never know how people may want to get involved. For example, a ticket holder can also be donating and volunteering; they may also own a company and may be interested in sponsoring the event.

So, it’s important to not limit yourself; create a single vision of how you want your event to be perceived and what you want it to achieve – this alone will attract the right people once you share it.

Five simple steps to creating a lived vision statement

The best way to instil a sense of purpose in your stakeholders is to write a vision statement for your event and then help them to own it and share it. To do this, follow these five steps:

  1. Answer three questions to determine the value proposition of your event:
    1. What is the main purpose of the event?
    2. What type of person is this event for?
    3. What is their incentive for attending this event?
  2. Write a rough draft of your vision statement.
  3. Share the vision statement with your A-team of stakeholders for input.
  4. Write the final draft of your vision statement.
  5. Share your vision statement in all appropriate channels (website, local media, social media).

A vision statement is emotional; it’s about positive change. This is what people will connect to and that’s when it becomes a lived vision.

Health triathlon

Darryl (not his real name) belonged to a triathlon club and was tasked with organising a public triathlon.

Particular challenges

While Darryl had organised triathlons before, this was especially challenging as it was ‘tri-purpose’, which he delighted in telling people was appropriate for a triathlon club. Its purpose was:

  • Increase the number of club members
  • Raise funds for the local hospital’s oncology ward
  • Raise fitness levels of the citizens of the half dozen or so suburbs that were his target

Finding his A-team

It was obvious that this was going to be a big, complex task and that planning would take the best part of a year and involve many volunteers. Fortunately, Darryl quickly recognised a small number of community members from various stakeholder groups who were as enthusiastic as he was – so these five people became his A-team.

Writing the vision

Darryl had written vision statements before, but it was crucial this time to formulate a single vision that would be relevant to all stakeholder groups: contestants, individual clubs (swimming, running, cycling), hospital auxiliary, sponsors, volunteers, race directors, coaches, team leaders, vendors, retail outlets, council staff, police, ambulance … the list seemed endless.

He liked the idea of a lived vision that would pull everyone together to ensure that he would get the best outcome for his event without always having to communicate separately with each stakeholder group.

He drafted and redrafted many versions of a vision statement that he felt would appeal to all of these groups, then finally felt ready to share it with his A-team.

Sharing it with his A-team and beyond

After some minor revisions by the A-team, the vision statement was finalised – less than a page of their why. This became the basis of some very effective advertising, including social media, television, newspapers, leaflets and posters.

(And yes, it was hugely successful. Darryl and his A-team were immediately booked for a repeat performance the following year.)

A vision for your A-team

Feeling stuck? Writing your own vision doesn’t sound as easy as it was for Darryl? You can always schedule a consultation with the team at Eventeamwork who can assist you in developing a lived vision for your event.

If you’d like to up-level your stakeholder engagement, download our free checklist “How to manage competing stakeholder interests when running large scale events”.

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Why we need people centric leadership in events

We see varying levels of system approaches and people centric approaches in volunteer management. One approach is relying on a volunteer management system (software) to solve the recruitment problem, the other is reluctance to use a system out of fear to lose the connection with volunteers. I believe the solution is a combination of a system approach AND people centric leaders to run a volunteer program effectively.

We often get asked one of the following two questions “Why do I need a system, I am just fine doing the rostering in my head?” and “How much is it to use your database?” Then the other day I listened to a podcast where an accountant spoke about their service and the impact of accounting software on the service they provide. Now everyone can basically do their own accounting but it doesn’t replace the service that is provided by professional accountants. I could see so many parallels to volunteer management in event and community organisations.

Seven years ago when we started Eventeamwork there were very few volunteer management systems on the market. Back then volunteer management typically involved many manual tasks around rostering and communication, particularly for volunteer programs involving hundreds of people over multiple days. These days there are literally hundreds of software solution to assist with database management and rostering on the market and there are more appearing every other week.

The search for efficiency and automation is changing the volunteer management field just like in the accounting profession. The system is really important to assist with the manual tasks, avoid errors and provide a better and faster registration experience for people. Coordinators save time and do their jobs more efficiently. They can now concentrate on planning and improving the volunteer program, focussing on communication and engagement, all of which will make the program more effective.

However the thread of having a system, particularly if it includes automation such as automatic confirmations and reminder messages, self-scheduling, self check-in etc, it can also be easy to lose touch with your volunteers. Where previously there would have been many emails and phone calls to determine availability and confirming rosters, we now need to find other ways to stay connected and have real communications.

Engagement is important and can get lost in the process of relying too much on the system. This unfortunately results in low attendance and low retention rates. The missing engagement and connection also contributes to volunteers at times being seen as a commodity rather than a valuable team member.

Interestingly the system approach is often experienced in event volunteer programs, whereas volunteer coordinators in community organisations tend to be fully aware of the importance of the engagement piece and the organisations often shy away from systems.

Just like in the accountant example, volunteer management systems cannot replace a volunteer coordinator. They cannot replace the building of relationships and connections between people and organisations. However systems can indeed add convenience and efficiency to the profession that allows volunteer coordinators to focus on planning and improvement rather than being bogged down by manual tasks.

As with everything, it’s about finding the right balance.

An effective volunteer program combines system and people centric leadership

While a good system helps volunteer coordinators be more efficient, to be able to really engage people and to retain people over time we need to go beyond systems. Engagement is key to achieving positive outcomes for organisations. Creating positive experiences for volunteers and engaging them in the outcomes will have a ripple effect on creating positive experiences for clients or attendees.

Volunteer management is more than allocating bodies to positions and the aspect of managing people, having conversations, ensuring well-being and satisfaction cannot be replaced by even the greatest systems.

Your engagement determines your culture, it is how you interact with staff, volunteers and people in general. Your culture will determine if your organisation can reach a competitive advantage. Anyone can replicate products and services. Anyone can get a volunteer management system but it’s what you do with it that will make all the difference. Nobody can replicate your unique culture.

So yes, systems are great in making our life easier and saving time on manual tasks but considering people and engagement will set you apart.

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Why to Focus on Event Outcomes when Managing Volunteers

focus on event outcomes to create outstanding experiences

The operational focus naturally is on our next event but there is a need to also focus on event outcomes to create long-term benefits. Many of us fall into the trap of focusing on outputs rather than outcomes, not because we don’t know any better but because it’s so easy to. Hence there are literally thousands of articles written on the topic. So it’s not a new concept at all. However, let’s be honest we all are creatures of habit and we are looking for the best way to prove what we are doing is worthwhile or of value and usually the easiest and most tangible way is to show outputs.

Let’s have a closer look at the difference. Outputs are controlled and immediate results of a product or service and therefore can be measured very easily. Outcomes on the other hand cannot be fully controlled and are a longer term and less tangible result. While outputs are necessary to achieve outcomes, it’s not always a straight path.

For example, recruiting 500 volunteers for an event is an output, but it doesn’t mean the event outcomes are achieved simply by having 500 volunteers on site. In fact, it is still possible to have negative outcomes such as poor customer service due to lack of engagement or lack of training.

Creating experiences

I believe there is a need in the event industry and particularly in volunteer management to focus more on outcomes. We see measurements such as ‘this many people attended’, ‘this many volunteers came’, ‘this many programs were handed out’, ‘this many surveys were filled in’ etc. Usually these are impressive figures, however they don’t say much about the quality aspect of the event experience. The experience is what determines the event outcome and more importantly determines if people return to the event, the image of the event in the public arena. These are important aspects for events with a long-term impact on time, money and operations.

We all know that the customer experience is more than watching a show, installation or fireworks. It goes far beyond the “show” and it will in fact influence the experience of the show. If you go to a large outdoor event, the show may be great, but you have been pushed around by event staff to make room for more people and keep certain areas free, been told they can’t help you when asking volunteers a question and were sent the wrong way when looking for the toilets. A simple example, but it is highly likely that your experience of the show will be greatly diminished by your experience as a customer at the event.

Similarly sporting events need to look after the participant’s experience all the way. It is not enough to take the entry money and leave participants on their own. We need to look after people for their entire experience from start to finish and even beyond.

The experience with an event is essential to bring participants and customers back and influences the public image of the event. We all know that, but often there seems to be a disconnect between the vision and the operations of events. The operational focus naturally is on the next event but I believe there is a need to keep an eye on the long-term vision and involve the team in it to make better decisions for long-term benefits.

Why is it relevant for managing your team?

We ourselves were guilty on focusing too much on outputs. Our volunteer program reports showed how many volunteers were recruited, what tasks were performed, what was trained, how many newsletters were sent and what policies and management structures were created. All of this just shows that we successfully implemented the volunteer program.

But what did this achieve? While we were telling clients that the number of volunteers is secondary to the quality of service, our reports still consistently showed outputs we produced and not outcomes we achieved.

The volunteer program is not a supporting function of an event but integral to achieving the event outcomes. Therefore we shifted our reporting to show the impact on the outcomes rather than how many volunteers were recruited.

We clearly didn’t ask the right questions and were surprised we kept getting the same answers. We believe that real change can be achieved by focusing on outcomes rather than outputs. Event organisers who take responsibility to drive their teams towards achieving outcomes will produce more successful events. The outputs produced are part of the equation but by shifting our focus to the outcomes, we may even create better outputs. Ultimately, we will create better event experiences.

For us this means bringing the volunteers on board to be part of achieving the event outcomes. The focus on the outcomes also creates a better volunteer experience and ensures a higher engagement. The result is volunteer retention, saving time and money in recruitment, training and advertising. Most importantly, engaged teams that are focused on the event outcomes will keep creating quality experiences for patrons and participants and as a consequence create more successful events.

What are your thoughts on this? Are your teams involved in the vision and outcome focuses? Are your reports focused on outputs or do they include outcomes?

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Why It Matters that Event Volunteers are Not Outsourced

outsourcing volunteers

When event organisers first approach us, we often hear the following “Can you please provide us with 50 volunteers?” It always makes me cringe. Nobody can be providing people to anyone, let alone volunteers. I think it’s interesting that especially short-term staff and volunteers are often thought of as a commodity.

To clarify, we don’t trade volunteers. We provide a management service that helps event organisers to leverage their volunteer program to achieve positive event outcomes. People volunteer for an organisation because they support the cause or align with their values. How can you outsource your volunteers and expect them to represent your organisation?

From our experience managers who understand the value their volunteers bring to their event and organisations often fear working with an outside management service. It is those organisations that by adopting a more effective volunteer management are able to achieve more positive outcomes.

Why outsourcing your people may hurt your event

Nonetheless there is an interesting trend happening. More and more event organisations are looking for a “done for you” service and do not want anything to do with it.

The underlying problems for this trend are:

  • High turnover of short-term staff
  • High no-show rates of volunteers
  • Volunteers often don’t know what they are doing
  • Volunteers often don’t represent the organisation

As organisations struggle with this, the blame often falls to the staff and volunteers and the solution is sought in outsourcing this ‘hassle’ altogether.

This is a short-term fix as it ensures that there are sufficient people at the event to provide the required services. However, from my experience, organisations don’t do themselves a favour by bandaging the problem and outsourcing this important responsibility.

The outcomes can be quite negative. Negative customer feedback can damage the brand and lead to a decrease in fundraising or ticket sales, and difficulties to attract sponsors, staff and volunteers.

Due to the short-term or as I call it ‘cyclic’ thinking, this often becomes the norm of how things are managed each year. As a result organisations cannot see the opportunities available by putting more focus on their people to achieve different and better outcomes.

Re-thinking what to outsource

On the other hand there are hundreds of studies showing a direct relation between staff engagement and productivity. People who are more engaged and looked after in their workplace get more done, stay longer and identify with their organisation. As far as I am aware there are no studies about volunteer engagement being linked to customer service yet, however considering we are working with people, we can assume the same is true for volunteers. If you take away remuneration as an incentive, engagement is even more important for volunteers.

So what does that mean for the future of event organisations?

Well, outsourcing sure has its place but maybe we need to re-think what exactly is being outsourced. Is it the recruitment, the administration, the management or the people?

I believe we can outsource systems, processes and procedures such as recruitment; administration and the entire management but outsourcing the people can do some real damage to your organisation and brand.

This is going to become a lot more relevant as competition for sponsors, funding and customers grows. Often your volunteers are your biggest assets to create the customer experience. It makes sense that you want to ensure they are managed and looked after well. Investing in good management is essential to achieve positive outcomes.

Volunteers also need to identify with your organisation and this can only be achieved by engaging them in your organisation. It seems illogical to give this part away – the part of aligning people with your vision, goals and values. It is the part that makes your organisation unique and standout and will be the determining part in keeping your event organisation sustainable.

If you want to focus on effective volunteer management and need some help, book in for a FREE Volunteer Management Chat with me.

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Are you really saving costs with your Event Volunteer Program, and should you?

saving costs

From small to large-scale events, something everyone deals with is allocating limited resources. Often this means that the time frames for event contractors, including volunteer coordinators are getting shorter. This means that the volunteer coordinator is required to plan and implement the volunteer program in less time in the interest of saving costs. But is it really a saving or does it end up a far bigger cost than you thought?

What, for example, are the costs if your volunteers are not treating your event attendees welcoming and friendly? What are the costs if your volunteers don’t know how to help your visitors? What are the costs if your volunteers are stressed out or bored? How does this affect your customer’s experience? What does that mean for your organisation’s brand image?

This is what could happen if the volunteer program is not planned effectively. These costs are not as easy to quantify as a shorter contract for your volunteer coordinator. However, to put this in perspective, would you consider the design of your marketing material a waste of money, for example?

If you’d like to have a better designed brochure, you typically need to invest some time and money and the result is more professional and can leverage more exposure and credibility. And just as a badly designed brochure could have a negative impact on your organisation, poorly planned volunteer programs can have a negative impact on your event outcomes.

Investment in the volunteer program is required to achieve a different outcome. What if you would look at your volunteers as your event day brochure? Your volunteers are the ones on the ground who will be the first contact with your customer, they are the ones who talk about your event and organisation and provide services to your event patrons. Your volunteers can be your professional “brochure” if you value them as people and invest in their experience.

So what does investing in your volunteers mean? Think about your organisational objectives and the event outcomes you want to achieve. Then think about how your volunteers support this. Then design the volunteer experience in your plan.

A solid plan is essential, as it defines the quality of the implementation of your volunteer program.

Volunteer Program Planning

On a regular basis it is important to review and reflect on why your organisation is engaging volunteers. What are the big goals your organisation is out there to achieve and how does your volunteer program support that? This will clarify what to focus on during the implementation phase of the program. It will make the job of the volunteer coordinator and the rest of the event team a lot easier.

For your volunteer program to have a positive impact on your event, you need to allocate time for yourself or your team to plan. A solid planning phase will define the quality of the implementation of your volunteer program.

Your planning phase should include a review of your registration system as well as the processes to attract, engage and train and supervise volunteers. This will clarify your approach to recruitment, engagement, training and onsite management.

When you have a clear plan and a clear goal in mind, the implementation will be easy. Instead of recruiting a certain number of volunteers, you now create a volunteer experience in order to achieve your anticipated outcomes.

Quality rather than quantity

A successful volunteer program is about quality rather than quantity. Quality lets you leverage your efforts to create amazing events for your audiences.

Just like when producing a professional brochure, it is worthwhile investing time and money in your volunteer program. The outcome will be a team of people who will become the extension of your event or organisational brand.

What’s your experience? How do you measure your volunteer program impact?

Program Planning Template

Want help?

If you would like help with your volunteer program planning book in for a 15-minute FREE consultation with me.

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5 Tips to Boost your Event Volunteer Recruitment

Volunteer Recruitment

Volunteer recruitment is the most obvious part of the volunteer management process. That is likely the reason why it is often interchangeably referred to as volunteer management.

Volunteer management however is a lot more complex with planning, engagement, training, support and communication. Volunteer recruitment is a part of this system – a crucial part of course in ensuring we get people involved with our event. Understanding its interdependency with the other areas of volunteer management is the key to succeed with volunteer recruitment.

The recruitment process can be challenging and stressful as many events heavily rely on volunteers but struggle with attracting enough volunteers. I have put together a few tips to help boost volunteer recruitment for your next event.

1. Preparation

Planning your recruitment is essential. Otherwise the recruitment drive is random, likely resulting in a poor outcome. It is key to plan how people will reach you and sign up. You can have the best recruitment call in place but if you don’t have an effective registration process you will lose people along the way before they even register.

Make registering easy. If you put yourself in the shoes of the potential volunteer during the process, you will be able to identify any obstacles that may prevent people from signing up. You could also test your process with a few colleagues.

Beware that the devil is in the detail. Think of a clearly structured volunteer registration page, an easy-to-navigate form and a phone number available for people to call if they encounter difficulties as a great foundation for your volunteer recruitment.

2. Roles

It is very common in the event industry to manage volunteers on a task by task basis rather than creating roles. Unfortunately, the more basic the role the less meaningful it is to the volunteer. Consider that the more importance you put on a role, the more importance a volunteer will put on its execution.

People are looking to assist events and organisations in a meaningful way. In addition, often people who volunteer are highly skilled in their professions. Most of these skills are transferable, so why not tap into this resource of expertise if it satisfies the event’s and the volunteer’s needs at the same time?

Creating meaningful roles will make roles more attractive for recruitment but also create a higher volunteer engagement, which will impact the overall visitor experience.

3. Your Offer

Your offer determines whom you attract as a volunteer. Incentives can be part of your offer but the most important is the experience you offer to a volunteer. In other terms what the volunteer will get out of volunteering at your event. This can differ from person to person but generally this may include skill development, being involved with a cause they care about, pro bono skilled work, meeting people and numerous others.

Consider the volunteer roles you need to fill and who would be your ideal person to fill these. Your ideal person may be part of a specific interest group or a specific industry. And your ideal person may be looking for different experiences and incentives than what you are currently offering.

Considering your target volunteers and their needs will help you create an offer that if delivered will keep volunteers motivated and committed to your event.

4. Channels

With email being less and less effective for recruitment conversations, it seems obvious to turn to social media. Social media hugely assists volunteer recruitment as it opened up opportunities to target specific groups, interests and locations.

However, it is also important to review where you find your ideal target market. There may be easier ways to reach them more effectively at a local club or at an expo for example.

Choosing the relevant channels will save you time and allows you to craft a tailored message.

5. Communication

Communication is key, both to events and to working with people. The more you can communicate and keep people informed along the way, the better engagement you will achieve.

The message you are trying to get across needs to be very clear to be effective. In marketing, going out to everyone is the most expensive way of promoting an opportunity. The same is true for volunteer recruitment. Going out and asking everyone dilutes the message.

A clear, targeted message lays out the benefits and requirements relevant to the target market before people register to volunteer.

Communicating more clearly before people register will achieve two things. It will show the commitment required, which will attract people who are serious about helping out. It will also cut out the ones who were not serious in the first place but just sign up in case it could become interesting. A clear message will save you a lot of time in the recruitment process and beyond.

Want some help?

How effective your volunteer recruitment is largely depends on how well you prepare for it and the clarity of your message to your target market.

If you need help with your volunteer recruitment check out our 6-Step Checklist that will help you improve volunteer recruitment and create better events.  CLICK HERE for FREE download.

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7 mistakes to avoid when managing events with volunteers

Many events cannot run without volunteers. However, often managers don’t realise the full value the volunteer program can bring to their event and organisation. Think about volunteers not showing up or volunteers not knowing what to do. In those instances the time and money spent can even have a negative impact on the event. As a result many event organisers become frustrated about working with volunteers.

It doesn’t have to be that way. On the contrary, if you are implementing a volunteer program already, why not find a way to make it more enjoyable for everyone AND run more successful events?

To achieve better event outcomes, here are the 7 things to avoid when managing volunteers for your event.

1. Hiring the wrong coordinator

Volunteer Management is often considered an entry-level role in the industry. However it’s a complex role and requires project coordination skills as well as people skills. The wrong hire will leave the volunteer coordinator overwhelmed, finding it hard to deliver all aspects of the program. This will impact the volunteers, as they may not get the attention they need.

Ultimately this affects the organisation as it leads to volunteers leaving or being disengaged and unsatisfied staff. This leads to a high turnover of volunteer coordinators.

Remember you are just as good as your team and having the right skills on your team will create better outcomes.

2. Not training enough

Volunteers completing only short shifts at an event can create the illusion that you don’t need to train them as much or that you don’t want to take more of their time.

Unfortunately, if you don’t train volunteers on their tasks as well as the bigger picture of the event, they cannot support you. This impacts your event but it also impacts your volunteers, as they feel inadequate and undervalued.

Adequate training and sharing information and your vision will empower your volunteers and integrate them into your organisational goals. This will make your work easier on site and have a positive affect not only on the volunteers but also on your event.

3. Seeing volunteers as free or saving costs

Uniforms and food for volunteers are standard budget items. However budgets often don’t allow for systems and dedicated management to run the volunteer program effectively. As a result volunteer coordinators spend a lot of time on manual tasks and are reactive rather than proactively planning and improving processes.

Make the spending on your volunteer program worthwhile by investing in planning and structuring in order to meet your organisational objectives. Without that, your budgets are used inefficiently and your volunteer program becomes a cost. The return on investment you’d want to achieve is similar to that of marketing expenses. It will show a positive image, brand awareness, and engagement of people with your event.

4. Improvising

When coordinators are engaged on temporary short contracts they often do not have enough time for planning. As a result they are just reacting to email, phone calls or the issue at hand and improvise. The volunteer program always gets implemented but with no structure or plan, the results are vague. Due to the lack of other factors to measure, the success of the volunteer program is often measured by volunteer hours spent. However, this doesn’t provide a qualitative result of how those hours were spent.

A well-planned volunteer program will start with looking for ways to improve on the previous year to achieve a different outcome. However you need to allow sufficient time for planning and structuring your next volunteer program. Once you have clear objectives you can build in indicators to measure success. You will then be able to receive a different and qualitative result in addition to the number of hours spent.

5. Focusing on recruitment only

Based on show up rates being about 50-60% in the event industry, the decision is often made to do more recruitment to allow for those large numbers not showing up.

Rather than spending the time to recruit double the amount of people, spend the time to analyse the show up rate and focus on strategies to increase this rate. As with employee engagement, volunteer engagement is very important to increase output and retention, which will show in the volunteer show up rate.

The difference to employee engagement is that volunteers have a much quicker exit from the organisation if they don’t feel valued. But volunteers are part of your team same as your staff, so engagement strategies you use for your employees mostly also work for your volunteers.

6. Thinking short-term

Annual events often work on shorter-term cycles and most of the event team is engaged on a less than 12-month contract. Staff is then only focused on the upcoming event.

Volunteer programs generally support the organisational plan and community engagement. As volunteers are a big part of the events the focus is often only on the event operations rather than the bigger picture.

Over time it can create the impression that the volunteer program only exists for the event rather than the organisation. This generates not only more work but also a lack of focus on the volunteers as they tend to be seen as temporary rather than integral to the organisation.

If you apply a strategic approach, it will ensure the program is aligned with the organisation. It creates a higher purpose for the volunteers and higher engagement and retention rates. A strategic approach saves time and money in the long run.

7. Dismissing the volunteer experience

Your volunteers’ experience is just as important as your customers’ experience. Often volunteers are taken for granted or treated differently to other people who engage with your event.

People who volunteer are part of your audience. They are connected to your vision and share your passion. Passion goes a long way, but after a bad experience or two they will spend their valuable time elsewhere and you may lose them as a volunteer and a customer.

Provide your volunteers with a great experience and focus on their benefits and their passion will enhance your event and organisation in a huge way. What better PR is there than having hundreds of brand ambassadors?

Don’t let this happen to you

As you can see an effective volunteer program takes a lot of effort. But if you are already running a volunteer program, can you afford not to put in the effort?

We hope you find these tips useful to critically analyse your volunteer program and make adjustments so it can stand out and exceed your event and organisational objectives.

We have put together a 6-Step Checklist that will help you create a more effective volunteer program step by step. You will avoid all the above mistakes and save time and money while achieving better results. CLICK HERE for FREE download.