Planning a Fall Festival - 5 Tips for Volunteer Coordinators

By Alison Zeller

Churches across the country will be hosting fall festivals this year, but not one of these events would be possible without volunteers. Whether they are running the popcorn stand, supervising the ring toss game, or picking up trash, volunteers are the heartbeat of your fall festival!

As volunteer coordinator, you’ve probably been planning the fall festival for several weeks - recruiting, writing volunteer job descriptions, creating schedules, and the like. But now that the event is getting close, how do you make sure everything goes according to plan? Follow these five tips!

1. Make your event volunteers stand out. Guests will definitely have questions and volunteers are the go-to people! A simple way to make your volunteers easy to find is to outfit them with custom t-shirts. With CTA’s Custom Connections, you can pick your color, load your design, and leave the rest up to us!
2. Don’t rely on your volunteers 100 percent. Plan for plenty of paid staff to be helping out, too. Staff members will have the authority to make important last-minute decisions and implement emergency procedures, if something goes wrong.
3. When scheduling volunteers, leave time for a break or two. Your volunteers will appreciate having time to enjoy the festival on their own or with their families. Offering free food doesn’t hurt either!
4. In the week leading up to your event, get a “debrief session” on the calendar and invite all of your volunteers. This meeting could be held anytime in the two weeks following your event. Don’t push it any farther than that, though. Your discussion will be most helpful if the event happenings are fresh in the volunteers’ minds! You can have a casual discussion or create a formal evaluation form. Either way, be sure to ask about the event itself, as well as the volunteers’ perception of your ministry’s volunteer management.
5. Say thank you - early and often! Volunteer appreciation should never be underestimated. Here are some fun ways to show volunteers how much you appreciate their help.

What are your tips and tricks for managing fall festival volunteers?

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