Fall festival ticketing software is the best tool for organizing event volunteers. If you are the event manager of an upcoming festival here are some great examples you can learn from.
As a big event date draws near, the event manager’s responsibility to organize the event volunteers reaches it highest level of complexity. This leadership role actually began early on, and may have been a rollercoaster ride of hits and misses of old fashion tools were made use of exclusively.
Today, with text messages, email and omnipresent social media, the task of managing event volunteers can be much easier using the ticketing software as the centralized rally point. Below are some real world examples as well as a volunteers for a hypothetical fall festival making full use of ticketing software throughout the event timeline.
Every fall season in Seattle, Washington the popular Fall Fishermen’s Festival is held. The family friendly event brings the marine experience to an easily understood level. This year’s event boasts appearances by the cast of the hit reality TV show ‘The Deadliest Catch’ for an added element of fun. And, as in years past, the fun is free to enjoy.
Being a free event, the Fall Fishermen’s Festival relies heavily on event volunteers. As seen on the official website, the call to action for the people of Seattle mentions some very specific tasks.
Help will be needed with set-up and break-down, the busing of tables, working the soda booths, at the children activity booths, the wooden boat building booth, cooking corn and supplying the BBQ. Every volunteer will receive a Fall Festival T-Shirt and salmon BBQ meal.
The event is not only fun for the public, its proceeds are donated to the Seattle Fishermen’s Memorial to assist families of fishers lost at sea.
If your fall festival is a free charity event, ticketing software has a role to play. The various activities scheduled for the Fisherman's Festival will be cash transactions, a portion of which will go to the charity. If fall festival ticketing software were to be used, the polite prompt to make a charity donation could be made along with the R.S.V.P. Additionally, whether free or paid, a festival can better gauge the facility needs by having the public R.S.V.P. or buy tickets in advance. Not knowing how many people are estimated to attend could lead to some issues at the gate (long lines) or a lack of parking.
Also in the category of gauging demand, the Fall Festival is rewarding its volunteers with a t-shirt - but how many? And in what sizes? A fall festival using ticketing software can ask its volunteers to register online and state their choice in t-shirt sizes at the same time!
In Richmond, TX, the Fort Bend County Women's Center has several fundraising events which are run entirely by volunteers. Organizing the small army of helpful volunteers is done with what they call a “V-Blast.” https://fortbendwomenscenter.org/en/content/volunteer
Sometimes volunteer needs pop up suddenly, whether is it help with a donation drive, a special project or an outreach fair. To fill these sudden needs, we are introducing V-Blast - a text blast program that will allow us to contact you immediately. This is an opt in program.
The V-Blast is group messaging via mobile phone text messages, that helps the Women’s Center quickly reach out to those who have opted in. The time taken to think of a catchy name for the communication method has more than one benefit.
One-to-many communications, like the Women's Center V-Blast, is a substantial time-saver. It also builds a sense of togetherness. The feeling that one is part of a team can spur better results from the volunteers of any event.
For example, a fall festival that is using the ticketing software as its central point of event organization can communicate to it volunteers (even at the last minute) through a mass emailing. The event organizer has all the phone numbers and email address of the volunteers because each signed-up through the ticketing software. An earlier post mentioned how popular mailing list programs like MailChimp can be used to communicate to ticket buyers, but the principle also applies to event volunteers.
According to the official website, the Baltimore Book Festival features hundreds of appearances by local, celebrity and nationally known authors, book signings, more than 100 exhibitors and booksellers, nonstop readings on multiple stages, cooking demos by top chefs, poetry readings, workshops, panel discussions, walking tours, storytellers and hands-on projects for kids, live music, and a delicious variety of food, beer and wine.
The festival has an excellent online registration process for its volunteers to use, however being such a large event, the volunteer subgroups must find their own way to communicate with each other. The most popular sub-group communication method is Facebook. One volunteer subgroup is using Facebook to choose a rallying point.
In the future, the Baltimore Book Festival may expand its website to encompass all the volunteer sub-group communication needs. But without ticketing software, an event organizer may find the disconnect between volunteer registration (website) and the volunteer communications (Facebook) leads to confusion. Any fall festival making use of modern ticketing software will find Facebook is an integral part of both its volunteers and its patrons, now that tickets can be sold directly on the event’s official Facebook Page. The Facebook ticket sales can be tracked and monitored inside the ticketing software, without the need to sign into a Facebook account. Then its a simple matter of having volunteer registration and communications occur with the ticketing software as the “command center.”
Reducing the number of places where the event manager must monitor activity to one central point is a matter of choosing the right ticketing software - one that includes everything mentioned above, and then some. Your choice in a ticketing website can help immensely when it comes to running a festival.
ThunderTix supports the needs of the busy fall festival event managers and the task of registering volunteers online. Online registration can also include asking for t-shirt sizes or any other reward being issued, using our Sell Products with Tickets feature. And as mentioned earlier, we offer Facebook tickets sales that can be tracked right inside a ThunderTix account. We have more features to help you have a successful fall festival, and if you have any questions, please contact us at your convenience.