How to recruit amazing volunteers for your events

Volunteers can make or break your event – here's how to recruit an amazing team that shares your vision and helps bring it to life.

The volunteers that work your event can often end up being the glue that holds everything together. So it follows that you want reliable, passionate people who will not only care about doing things right, but who will be a great representative of your organisation.

On the flipside, failing to recruit enough volunteers – or ending up with volunteers that aren’t a good fit – could have a negative impact on your event.

Which is why we’ve put together this quick guide. Whichever cause you’re hoping to raise money for, we’ll walk you through building a dedicated team who can help bring your charity or fundraiser event to life.

Let’s go ⚡.

Getting started – how to create a volunteer programme

Before you start actively looking for volunteers, it’s important to create a volunteer programme that clearly defines exactly which roles need filling.

This is such a crucial first step. If you don’t thoroughly assess how many volunteers you’ll need, and for which roles, you could find yourself with gaps in your teams.

To create your programme, follow these three steps:

Write a list of all the areas you’ll need help with

First up, you need to work out which areas you’ll need volunteer help with. To do so, write a list – and make it as thorough as possible. Ask other members of your team to take part in this task, too. The more heads you get together, the less likely you are to miss important roles that need filling.

Although the areas you need help with will depend on the nature of your event, some common event volunteer roles include:

Cleaning and post-event clear-up: To help keep your event site clean throughout the event, then clear everything up after.
Food and drink servers: To distribute food and drinks, or serve drinks on any bars you have.
Customer service and general help: To help attendees navigate your event and get any information they need.
Event setup: To get your event setup – think stages, signage, chairs, tables, decor etc.
Ushers: To help attendees find their way to their seats at seated events.
Crowd control: To help direct crowds and prevent congestion.
Marketing: To help with things like social media, website creation, and other marketing avenues.
Onsite parking: To direct traffic and ensure the most efficient use of parking at your event.
Merchandise sellers: To promote and sell any merch at your event.

💡Tip: Swanage Folk Festival relies on 396 hours of volunteers to ensure their town festival runs smoothly 🤯. That’s a lot of volunteers – you can read all about the various planning areas the festival needs help with in this interview.

Define your volunteer roles – and create job descriptions

Now that you’ve got a clear idea of which areas you need help with, you can start creating more specific volunteer roles.

Defining these roles, and creating clear job descriptions for them, is probably the single best thing you can do when it comes to recruiting volunteers that have the right experience and are a good fit for your event.

First, create a list or spreadsheet detailing how many volunteers you’ll need for each role. For example, you might need 10 bar staff, five parking staff, six people to help you with event setup… etc.

Next, define what each role will involve, and what skills and experience your volunteers will need to have. You can do this in rough form at first, but you’ll eventually want to create clear job descriptions that can be used when advertising each role.

This will help to make sure you get volunteers that are capable of their role – the last thing you want is for your bar to be filled with inexperienced staff who cause hefty queues to form. Or event setup staff that aren’t physically capable of manoeuvring heavy equipment.

Your job descriptions should include information like:

Responsibilities: What the volunteer will be expected to do.
Personal and professional skills: For example, being able to handle the pressure of working on a very busy bar.
Experience: If you only want experienced volunteers, now’s the time to state exactly what level of experience they’ll need to have.
Knowledge and interests: You might want to make sure your volunteers are knowledgeable or passionate about the area you event is in. For example, if you’re running an arts event, you might want to make sure they’re equipped to speak with attendees and answer any questions.
Physical traits: For example, the ability to manoeuvre stage equipment, or make lots of trips up and down stairs.

💡Tip: Planning your first ever music festival for a good cause? Read our guide: How to organise and sellout a small music festival in 9 steps >

Create an incentive for your volunteers

Volunteers might have their own motivations for wanting to help out at your event. For example, they might just want to get involved in a great happening for a good cause. Or to get some work experience.

Having said that, it’s still important to offer an incentive or two. Otherwise, you risk not recruiting enough staff.

Your incentives could include things like:

Free entry to a sold-out or expensive event: Just because volunteers are working, it doesn’t mean they won’t also get time to enjoy your event.
A great training programme and mentorship: This could be appealing to those looking to build up work experience from scratch.
Exclusive backstage passes: Give your volunteers the chance to mingle with key performers and get VIP treatment in their downtime.
Free food and drinks throughout your event: This could incentivise people to volunteer at, rather than just buy tickets to attend your event.
A letter of recommendation to a future employer: Again, this could be great news for those looking to break into a new career.

The recruitment process – how to find volunteers

Now that you’ve created your programme, you can start your search for amazing volunteers. There are a few different avenues you can try, here. It’s best to take a multi-pronged approach to give yourself the best chance at finding all the volunteers you need. Jon Baker, Festival Chair of Swanage Folk Festival, highlights that finding enough volunteers can be one of the more challenging aspects of planning their festival. With this in mind, it’s best to throw as wide a net as possible.

Below are some of the best ways to source and recruit volunteers:

Reach out to your email list and social media followers

First up, try connecting with those you know already have an active interest in your event, or who are invested in your cause.

Emailing your subscriber list with your existing volunteer opportunities is a great way to do this.

💡Tip: Ticket Tailor integrates with lots of mainstream email management platforms – including Mailchimp, Hubspot, ConstantContact and ActiveCampaign. This makes it really easy to contact all of your ticket buyers through your email marketing platform of choice.

It’s also worth advertising your volunteer opportunities across your social media channels. You could even offer your followers incentives to like and share your posts – for example, by giving them the chance to win free tickets to your event.

Search volunteer databases

There are lots of volunteer databases out there – in other words, online directories where volunteers list themselves in the hope of being contacted about opportunities.

For example, VolunteerMatch is a volunteer match service where volunteers can list their interest in certain types of opportunities.

It’s well worth giving sites like these a scout for volunteers that match your requirements.

Advertise your volunteer roles on volunteering networks

You can also advertise your volunteer opportunities via online networks. For example, the site we mentioned above, VolunteerMatch, also allows those looking for volunteers to advertise their roles.

Other places to advertise your roles include:

Reach out to local community groups

Finally, try reaching out to community groups to find enthusiastic volunteers who are keen to get involved with and support their local community.

For example, you could post messages on local Facebook groups, or even leave flyers in your town or village’s cafes and shops.

Raise more money for the things that count with Ticket Tailor

Whether you’re running an event to raise money for charity, a community project, or another cause – every penny really does count. At Ticket Tailor, we totally understand this, and as an independent ticketing platform are proud to be able to offer some of the cheapest rates around. Which means you can funnel more of your funds into the thing that matters – your good cause.

We only charge a small flat fee per ticket sold (never a percentage of your ticket sales, and never any hidden fees). Or, you can bulk buy ticketing credits to save even more. Plus, charity events get to enjoy an extra 20% discount when they ticket with us.

🎟️ Find out more about ticketing your charity events with Ticket Tailor >

💸 See how much you could save by switching from Eventbrite to Ticket Tailor >

💰 Check out Ticket Tailor pricing >