VolunteerSpot is a flexible platform and accommodates a variety of methods for recruiting and managing volunteer signups for your large carnival or festival. How you choose to use VolunteerSpot depends on your community and support strucuture.
Here are two popular options for coordianting carnival volunteers:
Shift Sign Up:
This option offers you the greatest flexibility in using your volunteers. Volunteers are simply asked to sign up for a time-slot(s). When volunteers arrive to help, they report to an on-site volunteer coordinator who assigns them to a specific area. This allows the coordinator to use volunteers as they are needed during the event, making sure mission-critical areas are covered before optional (or less important) areas.
Volunteers can make an easy decision of what time and how many hours they can help.
Job-Specific Sign Up:
If you have more than 350-400 volunteers who expect to help, we recommend splitting your signup into more than one sign-up sheet by job, carnival booth or task. There are two primary reasons. First, if you have a list of 100’s of opportunities on one calendar day, it is hard for volunteers to scroll through to find their preferred shift. Second, the larger your signup, the more memory it takes to load. To accommodate those with older computers or slower internet connections, we recommend only having 300-400 volunteer shifts on a given activity. Follow these steps to create a Job-Specific SignUp:
- Create Multiple Signup Sheets. This process helps volunteers decide more readily where to help that best matches their strengths and interests. For example, for a large community festival, you could create individual sign-up sheets by area of need.
- Ticket Booth
- Concessions
- Garbage Clean-Up
- Parking
- Medical Services (certification required)
- Children's Tent
- Volunteer Appreciation Party
- Within each calendar, set up your shifts and needs.
TIP: If each signup sheet has similar shifts and information, you can quickly duplicate any planned activity in the MyActivities tab. Click the gold "+" button to the right of the activity name, then rename the signup sheet/signup calendar.
Here are a few examples:
Then, invite your volunteers to sign up.
- Here's how:
Please note: You may also send a sign-up invitation email directly to volunteers from VolunteerSpot; however we do not recommend this option if you are sending more then 50-100 volunteer invitations.
If you have several sign-up sheets for volunteers to choose from, you can send one email or eNewsletter to your volunteers, giving them a choice of where they would like to help.
Click below for example signup invitation options:
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