Hosting volunteers

Most organizations have more volunteer-ready work than they think. Three questions usually surface it:

• What has been on the "when we get to it" list for over a year? That list is almost entirely volunteer work — it is there precisely because it is real but not urgent.
• What does your most expensive person do that does not need them? Sorting, counting, driving, setting up. An hour taken off them is worth more than an hour added anywhere else.
• What do you apologise to people for? Slow responses, an out-of-date website, a room nobody has painted. Apologies mark unmet capacity.

Then write each one down as a task with a start, an end and a definition of finished. A task you cannot describe in two sentences is not ready to hand to a stranger.

1. List the distinct tasks and how many people each can physically absorb at once — stations, tools, chairs, square footage.
2. Subtract anything that needs a staff member standing next to it, unless you have that staff member.
3. Add a buffer of one or two for the people who do not arrive. Some proportion of sign-ups always fall through, and it is higher for a free event on a Saturday morning.
4. Now set your cap. If the number is small, say so in the listing — "space for 8" reads as selective rather than as unpopular.

Have an overflow task. One job that can absorb anyone spare and does not need supervision — a second room to sort, a stretch of fence to paint, a list to call. It costs nothing to have ready and it is the difference between a good day and an awkward one when eleven people arrive for eight places.

It is tempting to write a listing that sounds as attractive as possible, and it works — right up to the morning, when the people who signed up for something they cannot actually do either do not come or come and struggle.

A listing that says "this is four hours on your feet outdoors in July, and there is shaded seated work for anyone who needs it" gets fewer sign-ups and a better day. It also gets you repeat volunteers, which is the number that actually matters — recruiting the same person twice is the cheapest volunteering there is.

• Overlap by fifteen minutes. The outgoing group briefs the incoming one and you stop giving the same speech all day.
• Cap each shift separately to the number that station can hold.
• Do not make the last shift the teardown shift without saying so. People who signed up to serve food and found themselves stacking chairs in the dark feel tricked, and they are right.
• Repeating events beat one big day for most organizations. A monthly Saturday that always happens builds a group of people who know what they are doing; one annual event rebuilds from zero every year.

On the mechanics of setting either of these up, see posting an event.

Most bad volunteer days are bad because of a briefing that did not happen. It does not need to be long:

1. Here is what we are doing today and here is why it matters to the people we serve.
2. Here is your specific job, and here is what finished looks like.
3. Water is here, toilets are there, we finish at this time.
4. If something breaks, someone gets hurt, or you are not sure — find this person, and here is what they look like.
5. When you have finished, come to me rather than waiting.

A guardian approving a 15-year-old is deciding whether to trust an organization they have never met. They want to know who is supervising, how many adults there are, whether their child is ever alone with an adult, what the work physically involves, and how their child gets home.

Put the answers in the event description rather than waiting to be asked. It converts better than anything else you can write, because it is the only part of the listing addressed to the person who actually says yes or no.

Use the per-event guardian approval for anything a guardian would want to be asked about separately — an overnight, travel out of town, water, heights, power tools or a late finish. It costs you some sign-ups, so use it where it earns that cost.

One limitation to know about: a volunteer signing up from a different organization has no record inside yours, so requirements you set on the event cannot be checked against them. Write anything genuinely non-negotiable into the description as well — that is the part everybody reads.

Recruiting is the expensive part. Almost everything that makes a volunteer come back a second time is free:

• They were given real work and they knew why it mattered.
• Somebody knew their name.
• They were not left standing around.
• They were thanked specifically, not generically.
• They were asked back to a named date.

If you run a recurring event, the same group starts to know the work and you stop briefing from scratch. That is when hosting volunteers gets cheaper than doing it yourself — and not usually before.