Vegetarian Food Fair Manual Project

The Vegetarian Food Fair Manual Project

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Part II

Section 12: Organizing food fair volunteers

Adequate volunteer coverage on the day of the fair is one of the keys to a successful event, so you should plan to spend time recruiting and considering volunteer resources. Before you begin organizing volunteers, you should have a general idea of the kinds of activities you're having at your food fair as well as your own organization's visibility. You don't need to wait until the fair is completely organized to begin recruiting volunteers. Given the importance of volunteer coverage, it's not something you want to do at the last minute. Once the date and general ideas are solidified and planning begins, you can start looking for volunteers-there will ample opportunity to familiarize them with the details of the fair closer to the day of the event.

Knowing in advance what kinds of activities you have to cover with volunteers will help you determine the minimum number of volunteers you need to cover the fair. Thinking about your organization's role will help you decide how much volunteer recruiting you may need to do: if your organization plays a prominent role in the fair (running a fundraiser or focusing on outreach, for example), your members may already be spoken for to cover tasks related to this involvement. If your organization's role is not as prominent, you can allocate some of your member volunteers to other fair tasks and reduce the need for volunteers outside your organization.

After you define these preliminary guidelines, you can begin recruiting and organizing volunteers. See Appendix C for sample organizational materials. TOP

Recruiting volunteers

You'll need to confirm at least the minimum number of volunteers needed to ensure that the food fair is covered and can go on as planned. To feel comfortable, however, you'll also want to have some extra volunteers confirmed to help at the fair all day, to give breaks to volunteers during the day, or to cover for a volunteer who cancels at the last minute or becomes ill. If other organizations have become involved in planning the food fair early on, their members will likely assume volunteer positions just as those from your organization will. If your members and those of other organizations invested in the food fair do not yield enough volunteers, you should start recruiting by contacting some of the organizations you listed in Section 2.

With enough volunteers, participating in the food fair is a fun experience. You should recruit volunteers in an upbeat way, encouraging them to sign up for as much time as they can spare for the duration of the fair. Be prepared to describe some of the tasks that volunteers have to do, and give prospective volunteers a choice of tasks. You should consider rotating volunteer shifts if possible, which offer a variety of tasks. It's also a good idea to assign at least two volunteers to each task so that no one has to work alone. Some people prefer to sign up with a friend, and creating groups of two may encourage participation. You may also have a special celebration event planned for after the fair for volunteers, and that may provide incentive for participation (see Section 27). Activists and others who feel strongly about vegetarianism will likely be anxious to participate in a food fair, so you probably won't have trouble finding enough volunteers.

As you recruit volunteers, create a list of all confirmed volunteers that have been recruited for the fair (including those from your own organization). Blank lists appear at the end of this section. TOP

Getting familiar

Once you've gotten an adequate number of volunteers, you'll need to spend some time familiarizing them with the details of the food fair. One suggestion is to organize a special meeting to explain what will happen at the fair and make sure everyone understands his or her role. The meeting should take place about a week before the food fair. At this point, you will have finalized the details of the food fair, and you will know exactly how many volunteers are needed for each activity. The meeting might proceed as shown in the sample provided at the end of this section.

You should have materials prepared for volunteers as needed. You might want to provide a copy of the site layout as well as a list of rules or regulations that you must follow at the site. If you're going to break volunteers into groups as described below, you should have a list of specific tasks and perhaps a checklist with which volunteers can become familiar. TOP

Divide and conquer

The easiest way to get the volunteers organized for the fair is to break the event into sections, determine the tasks for each section, and divide the volunteers into groups to cover each event. The length of your event will determine the breakdown of the event. A day-long event might be divided into times of the day, whereas an event that runs more than one day may have larger divisions as well as subdivisions.

Each section of the day will have certain activities and other tasks that need volunteer coverage. Some tasks may need fair-long coverage. The sample list of tasks will guide your creation of the list for your fair. During the meeting, volunteers can group themselves to cover the tasks on the list. You can also discuss arrival times, set-up, teardown, and other general issues.

There will be time to brief volunteers again on the day of the fair, so you need not worry about going over everything at the meeting. You will also likely have some last-minute changes and instructions that day. TOP