Recruiting & Managing Volunteers

It’s probably not an overstatement to say that volunteers are the backbone of every successful race. They are the people that make much of race day happen and, yet, recruiting and managing volunteers, training them properly and retaining them for the long run remains a constant headache for race directors of all levels of experience.

Well, today we’re going to try and make everyone’s life a little bit easier by going over some great tips and strategies for streamlining your volunteer recruitment and fine-tuning all aspects of your volunteer management. We’ll discuss tips for balancing your volunteer load across volunteer shifts, creating mega shifts with enough buffer to make sure you’ve got all the people you need on race day, and some tried-and-tested tactics to mitigate volunteer attrition.

My guest for today’s discussion, Tim Bradley, is the volunteer coordinator for the McCourt Foundation, organizers of the Los Angeles Marathon and other marquee races. Tim has recruited and managed thousands of volunteers over the years and, as you’ll see, he has developed a very specific approach to running volunteer programs, based on evidence and experimentation. 

In this episode:

• What motivates volunteers to volunteer for a race
• Volunteer recruitment for for-profit vs nonprofit races
• The cost of recruiting and managing volunteers: donations, free entries, shirts, meals, transportation
• What volunteers can and can't do for your race
• Organizing your volunteer force: flat vs hierarchical team structures
• Qualities to look for in your group captains and super-volunteers
• Tim's detailed volunteer recruitment plan/schedule
• Recruiting individual volunteers vs recruiting volunteer groups
• Load balancing, mega shifts and diversification: making sure your shifts fill up evenly across the board
• The importance of mega shifts and shift buffers/padding for mitigating volunteer attrition on race day
• Working out how many volunteers you'll need for your race
• Recruiting volunteers through email, social media, paid ads, text messages, cold calling, volunteer marketplaces
• Building a volunteer mailing list 
• Signing up volunteers from your past race participants 
• Recruiting groups of volunteers from high school service clubs, sports teams
• How to link to your volunteer program/sign up page from your website
• Reducing friction throughout your volunteer signup process
• Singing in and briefing volunteers on race day
• Practical food/snack ideas for volunteers and how to distribute them on race day
• "Thank you" emails and issuing volunteer service verification letters

Many thanks to our podcast sponsors, RunSignup and Racecheck, for supporting our efforts to provide great, free content to the race director community:

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