Coordinating volunteers

If you have volunteers helping to run your event, you need to consider how you will coordinate them. Make sure you make things easy for volunteers. This could be a completely new experience for them. They may come alone and not know anyone, and they may live close by but not know the immediate area of event.

You should:

• Get there early and be identifiable.
• Organise your volunteer opportunities into small, easily accomplished tasks with clear starting and ending points. Try to provide a variety of potential tasks, some that require working in a group and some that allow people to work alone.
• Encourage peer-support- volunteers learn from eachother.
• Make things fun for volunteers.
• Thank volunteers.
• Encourage feedback.

If you are managing volunteers, it is useful to give them feedback on what they have done well and what they could improve on.

These are some good practices to follow when you are giving feedback:

• Be clear about what you want to say
• Emphasise the positive
• Be specific - avoid generalisations - like "all," "never," "always."
• Focus on behaviour rather than the  person
• Refer to behaviour that can be changed
• Own the feedback - Use 'I' statements