Online Sign Up Blog by VolunteerSpot

Carnival Games - Ideas for Free or Nearly Free Fun and Fundraising

 

Super Duper Fun Carnival Games!

With spring officially here there are a lot of busy committee people looking for ideas to make spring carnivals a success, including getting the best (and most profitable) carnival games, carnival booths and activities booked and ready for the day. VolunteerSpot has created a free eBook that's stuffed full of everything you need to make your carnival a success -- click here to see it.

This post proudly sponsored by Carnival Savers

10% discount on carnival supplies & prizes: Promo Code=VOLUNTEER

 

Carnival games are the bread and butter of any carnival’s plan to maximize revenues. Some things you pretty much have to rent, like large bounce houses, dunking booths and battling padded sumo suits. But there are a lot of creative winning activities that can be put together with very little money, the only thing that costs money is prizes (and even some of those can be free, I’ll tell you how.) So in the spirit of economic downturns (and maximizing profits!), here’s a big list to get started. 

Free or Nearly Free Activities

1. Ring Toss – easy to build a ring toss setup with 2 liter soda bottles.
2. Tug of War: all this takes is a big length of rope – might even be available from the PE department of the school. Moms vs Dads, Brothers vs Sisters, 4^th grade vs 5^th grade, boys vs girls are all great ways to drum up carnival enthusiasm.
3. Flocking Sales and Insurance – Sell the opportunity to have a flock of plastic flamingos (or tricycles or potted plants or a giant school mascot or whatever else you can come up with) placed on someone’s front lawn – and sell insurance policies against being flocked. Also, sell insurance against having your name revealed as someone who’s flocked someone else. It’s like toilet papering someone's yard, but way easier to clean up!!
4. Toy Swap – Bring a toy and drop it off upon entering the carnival – get one swap ticket for each toy brought.  Collect toys up until a certain point in the carnival day. At a designated time, open the toy swap to everyone who’s brought something.
5. Giant musical chairs – Start with 40 people and 30 chairs and work down to one big winner who gets a prize ribbon.
6. Guess what?: Have strange substances in containers and participants have to guess what it is either by smell, touch or sound. (Make sure to have allergy information on ingredients at hand.)
7. Exile Island – People can buy a chance to send a friend to the carnival's "Exile Island” and while there they can find clues to a mystery prize hidden somewhere in the carnival.
8. Beading booth – One roll of thin cord and some creative beading ideas can occupy carnival goers for a long time. Beads can be made ahead of time out of natural materials, rockets tied with wire, clay glazed and fired ahead of time, macaroni for little kids – the beads don’t have to cost much,  if anything, and the fun is in putting together your own cool necklace! Sell tickets by the necklace or in 10 minute increments.

Free or nearly free prizes

1. Ribbon Rewards – Cut 5 inch lengths of satin ribbon and tie them to a large safety pin. Each time a child participates in an activity, tie a new colored ribbon to the safety pin. Each booth has a different color. The most active and involved (and ticket-spending) kids will end up with a chest full of ribbons, and a pretty neat keepsake from that year’s carnival. You can even add a special prize offering to the kid who collects the most ribbons.
2. Carnival passports – Each kid gets a passport to be stamped at each activity booth – six or more stamps per card. Once the passport is filled it can be entered into a drawing to win a bigger door prize – another way to drum up more booth ticket sales!
3. Lunch with the principal or pastor– A special opportunity to sit down for a meal with the leader can be a drawing prize. It can be a casual lunch or something nicer, donated by a local restaurant.
4. Clean out the favor bag closet – Send out a notice asking for parents to donate leftover party favor prizes – this alone can fill up most of the needs of the fair for prizes.

We know you've got your own great ideas -- so please click 'Comments'  below and let us know what creative and fun carnival ideas are traditions in your community.

Volunteer Spotlight: Shelly-Marie of Heart House

Good news - it's something we all need a little (or a lot) more of these days. One of the wonderful things about working at VolunteerSpot, is we see good news every day - YOURS!  Our volunteers are doing wonderful work for a variety of schools, community groups and nonprofits, and our simple volunteer software is helping them do it more efficiently and with less hassle.  We'd like share good news and uplifting stories by putting our volunteer leaders in the Spotlight -- Today we’re speaking with Shelly-Marie Rios of Heart House.

How did you get started working with nonprofits? 

When I was 15, I volunteered at our local Dept. of Social Services for the summer. One afternoon I completely reorganized their filing system, innocently unaware of how disruptive that would be! In the twenty years since, I have worked with nothing but non-profit organizations in the Arts and Education in Texas and Michigan. At Heart House, I always make sure I thoroughly explain our filing system to our interns and volunteers....ha!

How does Heart House serve the community?

Heart House is a nonprofit that provides a safe haven and after-school tutoring and mentoring to children k – 6th grade from working families in Austin, TX. Our clubhouses are located in the heart of large apartment complexes where most of our kids live. We provide a caring learning environment that's also fun and familiar. Our vision is to create a community that cares for children, creating children that care for their community.

What advice do you have for volunteer leaders?

Be sincere, warm and engaging. And, always listen to what volunteers have to say about your volunteer program. They have fresh eyes and see it in ways you cannot.

Why did you decide to use VolunteerSpot?

Most people are online now, and using this tool is super way of making it easy for volunteers to not only sign-up, but also to keep their schedule and be reminded automatically. VolunteerSpot is also wonderfully assessable for me from anywhere -- I split my time between two campuses.

What else would you like our readers to know?

We are in need of tutoring volunteers at both our north and south Austin locations. Most of our kids don’t have the resources at home to help them with homework. This means our homework time is critical to their success in school and life. We like to call our volunteers Super Hero’s because, really, that’s what they are. 

Readers interested in volunteering can contact me at Volunteer@HeartHouse.org.  Those interested in learning more about Heart House or making a donation, please do so here: HeartHouse.org.

Shelly-Marie Rios

Volunteer Coordinator

Heart House Austin

Volunteer@HeartHouse.org

Volunteer Software

Volunteer software to schedule volunteers is something available to many organizations, usually for a fee ranging from $99 to $395 or even more for enterprise level systems. It takes orientation and training to learn to use these effectively - an especially difficult  hurdle when it may be a very part-time volunteer running the system. There can be so many bells and whistles it gets in the way of people actually using it. So a high cost plus a steep learning curve may easily deter small, more informal groups like PTAs, sports clubs, community building teams or member drive coordinators from signing on.

VolunteerSpot is different. First off, it's free. Second, it was designed to be easy to understand by any volunteers or volunteer coordinators who need a better scheduling tool. It's designed so it's easy to get up and running the first time by any person logging on to the web site looking for a way to make communication easy - even people who don't use computers for anything other than checking email. It's also extremely robust having already been put to the test scheduling all day school carnivals with 200 volunteer roles and every day, year long activities to get playground monitors to work every day across a simply 150 day schedule (that last one took an untrained coordinator just 14 minutes to set up.) and a successful get out the vote operation.

We created VolunteerSpot because we were the frustrated part-time volunteers in school, in church and in scouts who couldn't find simple scheduling tools to make our lives easily. So we built one. We hope you try it and it helps you as much as it helped us.

See the New Video Demo of our Free Volunteer Scheduling Software and Online Signup Sheet Tool

Curious about VolunteerSpot?  We now have two ways you can check us out before getting started.

Click Here to take a video tour. We'll show you how easy it is for your volunteers to sign up, and the simple steps for creating the schedule.  It's also a useful video for letting your computer-shy volunteers know what to expect.

On the same page, you can choose a sample signup using our live tool.  Choose an activity and experience a real volunteer signup sequence: choosing a volunteer spot or two, and receiving a confirmation message. Choose from one of five activities:  Community Kitchen, Neighborhood Cleanup, Swim Team, Girl Scout Cookie Booth Schedule, and Kindergarten Classroom Helpers.

Earth Day - How to Volunteer and Take Action

 

Earth Day is coming April 22, and is one of the most important service days of the year. With the endless stream of bad news related to climate change, it's nice to know there truly are things that can be done to improve the health of the planet and we can do those things easily in our own communities.

Community Fairs and Earth Day Festivals are a great place to get started and learn what actions you and your family can take to make a genuine difference. One which I always found quite daunting, was creating a compost heap in the back yard -- I worried about The Smell, and The Mess, and The Critters. By attending an Earth Day environmental fair, I actually got to see compost heaps in action and learned that by decomposing our waste naturally, it actually helps reduce greenhouse gases (and is incredibly good for your yard!). So now I have 2 compost heaps, and practice has helped to eliminate all the fears I had. 

Other great Earth Day events include park cleanups and recycling drives. Kids often want to join in and help make a difference and may be looking for projects of their own, such as: planting trees, picking up trash, hand painting reusable grocery bags, donating toys for reuse.

If you're planning to spearhead your own community action, or staff up an environmental fair, VolunteerSpot can making managing the task far easier. Just take ten minutes to set up all the jobs, supplies and schedules you need in VolunteerSpot, and then send out an announcement email to interested friends and neighbors - they can click to the schedule directly from your email and choose an action they want to be responsible for. Or, if you have a community listserv or a web site or blog, you can also post a URL link to your event so anyone can just click in and choose a job. Makes saving the planet pretty convenient. VolunteerSpot will also send out reminder emails so everyone gets there on time and well prepared.

Earth Day was created out of a genuine, heart-felt desire to draw attention to environmental threats and protect the planet. So when we go out to join in a local community action, let's remember to pack a waste-free picnic.  The creative earth stewards at Wishes For the Sky, an Earth Day festival in St. Paul, MN, have put together these guidelines. Last year, with almost 2,000 participants, they generated only 5 pounds of trash!:

• Please do your part by thinking carefully about the impacts of items that you bring
• Bring beverages in reusable mugs and/or reusable water bottles
• Use cloth napkins, real silverware, and washable dishes from home. Even plastic utensils can be packed out and reused (Zoo Pals utensils for kids are great for this!)
• If you need to wrap something, use tin foil (which can be recycled) or wax paper (which can be composted)
• Avoid single serving and over-packaged foods
• If you are getting take-out from a restaurant or deli, bring your own reusable Tupperware for them to fill!
• In general, avoid plastic and Styrofoam.

April 22 was chosen for Earth Day because it's generally a great weather day all over the country, So plan now to get out there and make a difference for a day, and then keep making a difference!

White House Vegetable Garden a Victory for All of Us

 I was thrilled beyond words to hear of plans to break ground today on the new White House vegetable garden spear-headed by Alice Waters, a world renowned chef, local food proponent and creator and backer of the Edible Schoolyard. Michelle Obama has explained there will be arugula (which we love) but no beets (her husband doesn't like them, neither does mine). And the best part is the garden will be planted and harvested by local school kids, and presumably some awesome parent volunteers.

Alice Waters is a legend in the Bay Area for her food, her adherence to seasonal schedules for eating and cooking, and for turning a neglected Berkeley middle school yard into a thriving organic garden that's integrated into the school curriculum.

Growing your own food teaches kids the value of their labor, connects them to the land and teaches them what real fresh food looks and tastes like. It's a great science and nutrition exercise.

School gardens like this are nothing new, but a common thread is that they need involved and committed people to make them happen. How can you make this happen at your school? Check at Alice Water' Chez Panisse Foundation web site for resources, and see if local organizations are available to guide or sponsor you. Then you just need a core group of leaders (hopefully a couple with some gardening experience) to spearhead each step of the project.

Once you've identified a site, the tasks become pretty clear: fencing to keep out critters, soil preparation and garden layout, water delivery and irrigation, transplanting and seeding, weeding, pest control (hopefully organic) and finally harvest. Each of these steps requires people to show up and take on a job, and making it as turnkey as automated drip lines is what VolunteerSpot does best.

As you spearhead your garden planning, plot the jobs in VolunteerSpot. Your garden development and plant growth will take months -- but it's easily to build a long term calendar using the VolunteerSpot planning wizard. It sets up quicker than it takes to stake a tomato plant, and it will make the project so much more successful because all the volunteers will have a simple place to check to see what's happening and how they can help. And nothing gets forgotten, because the email reminders to every volunteer for every shift are all automated.

We salute the White House for growing their own food and involving local kids. Now here's to the rest of us setting up community gardens for our own school kids.

Parent-Teacher Conference Scheduling - Best Practice from NY

One of the things that I love about  VolunteerSpot is that our customers are so tremendously helpful and share new ways to use our simple signup tool!  Get a bunch of volunteers and volunteer leaders together in a room, or online, as the case may be, and some wonderful good is going to come out of it!

Typically, a teacher (or a home room parent) sets up a parent-teacher conference singup for his or her class.  A very creative parent leader in New York took our signup tool to heart, added a dash of website customization, and made a very smooth parent-teacher conference scheduling dashboard for his ENTIRE school! Michael, THANK YOU for your creativity and for sharing your best practice with our VolunteerSpot community.  Here's what he did...

As an Organizer, Michael used the Plan Now Wizard in VolunteerSpot to plan a parent-teacher conference signup for each teacher, using the times/days they requested.  Each teacher's conference schedule was planned as a unique activity and given the teacher's name.  For each activity, he generated a URL link to invite parents to signup.

Now comes the fun part -- Michael created a parent-teacher conference page on the school website linking each teacher's signup URL to his or her name.  He then created a help-page showing parents step-by-step what to expect. Here's the parent instructions below (click to see full-screen).  I blocked-out teacher names for confidentially purposes.

 
 

Next, Michael did a terrific job of communicating with parents about what to expect.  He sent out an email letting parents know that parent-teacher conference scheduling would be automated online this year, using VolunteerSpot. Just to cover all the bases, he included this set of screen shots, to show parents exactly what they would be doing to signup.  

Kudos Michael - great work and thanks for sharing!!

Fundraisers and Fundraising Ideas - Time for Some Fresh Ideas!!

No matter what kind of organization you volunteer with, fundraising is usually an important part of how things get paid for. Sometimes interest in tried and true fundraisers is just falling off, or maybe there's an important new goal the group is working toward -- a band trip to the Macy's parade, a new playground installation or a team's desire for new uniforms.

I've participated in a lot of fundraisers, but I'm constantly on the lookout for new ideas. One site that we've recently discovered is Top School Fundraisers, which has fundraising ideas that will suit not just schools, but teams and clubs as well.

Some of the ideas here I had never seen before and sound really intriguing: team logo Nalgene bottles to replace individual (disposable) water bottles at games. Parents buy the logo bottle as a fundraiser (and save on all those water runs to the grocery store!). Flamingo Flocking -- sending flocks of pink flamingos to someone's yard and then charging for "bird removal".

The blog is one of the most informative and useful parts of the site -- from articles like 14 Ways to Increase Product Sale Participation, Are You Teaching Students These Important Lessons? and 12 Strategies for Overcoming "Fundraising Fatigue", probably any subject you are needing help with from a fundraisers perspective is covered here.

As you are planning your group's fundraising activities, go check out Top School Fundraisers and get some fresh ideas!

Teacher Appreciation Week - Greatest Teacher Gifts and Ideas!

National Teacher Appreciation Week is coming soon  -- are you ready? Happening May 4th - 8th, 2009 (always the first full week in May), we have a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the hard-working academic heroes that not only teach our kids their ABCs and 123s, but do it with great enthusiasm, great patience and great love.  

At VolunteerSpot, we LOVE teachers!  We also love that our volunteers do, too. Teachers and parents, Thank you for sharing your ideas for the Greatest Teacher Gifts back in January, when we called for suggestions.  You had creative and unique ideas for celebrating teachers all year long - many of them no-cost or low cost -- all of them high-impact!  We've rolled them together into helpful eBook filled with Teacher Gift Ideas you will love.

Whether you are making plans individually, with your fellow class parents, or as a PTA/PTO, we hope this eBook will spark some ideas for saying thank you to your teachers this coming Teacher Appreciation Week and beyond.

CLICK HERE to view The Greatest Gifts For Teachers

Inside this eBook:

• Seasonal gift ideas to honor teachers throughout the school year

Back to School
Thanksgiving
Winter Holidays
Valentine’s Day
Teacher Appreciation Week
End of the Year

• Hands on kid-to-teacher gift suggestions that will teach kids how to have and show their appreciation


• A teacher-approved list of the best (and worst) gifts


• Gifts for long-time and retiring teachers


• Gifts for Middle School and High School Teachers


• Giving the gift of time with VolunteerSpot

One of the greatest ideas I know is to organize parents to deliver a home cooked family size meal to each teacher during Teacher Appreciation Week. As us working parents know, there's nothing more welcome at the end of a hard day than a healthy, home-cooked meal that's already made! There are a million great ideas (except coffee mugs ;-) -- so start planning your teacher's week today!! Our ebook makes it so simple!!

Batter up! VolunteerSpot's free scheduling software a hit with Little Leagues

Ahhh, it's almost Spring - the sun is going down later and later each evening, and the kids in my neighborhood are starting to play catch in their yards after school.  It's only just March and (where I live, in Texas) baseball and softball Little Leagues are getting organized. After last year's season as the U9 coach - my neighbor, Mike, swore he'd never take on that responsibility again.  He loved the field time with the kids, but got burned out with late-night emails, reminder phone calls, and chasing down parents to help with team activities. VolunteerSpot gives parent coaches like Mike the opportunity to focus on the fun stuff (playing ball) by eliminating the busy work of coordinating parent volunteers.

Please join the other parent coaches and volunteers out there who are using VolunteerSpot to simplify their Little League volunteer coordination needs.  In a handful of minutes, the coach or volunteer coordinator sets up a schedule of needs using our simple online calendar planning wizard.  Parents are invited using an email message, URL link or a button on your team or league website.  In just a few clicks, parents choose when and how to help, and the schedule is updated in real time as volunteer spots fill up.  VolunteerSpot sends automated reminder and thank you messages helping everyone keep their commitments.  Great for:

• Volunteer Umpire Scheduling
• Snack Shack/Concessions Stand (scheduling who works it and what supplies are needed)
• Car pools
• Parent Coach Assistants
• Snack Schedule
• Batting/Pitching Practice Intensives
• Tournaments

          and more...

Start Scheduling Little League Volunteers Now with VolunteerSpot's free and easy sign up software!  At VolunteerSpot, we're ready to help you get rid of paper volunteer sign up sheets,  reduce you workload, increase parent participation and help make your season a success!

Please check out our free eBook to see sample sign up sheets for Little League concessions stands and youth sports.

Festival Volunteer Recruiting & Scheduling - Best Practice from Chicago CIMM Fest

We want to put a shout out to the 1st Annual Chicago International Movies and Music Festival for a best-practice use of VolunteerSpot for signing up and scheduling volunteers.  Using our simple and free signup tool, Festival leader Jenny Pfafflin was able to recruit and fill close to 100 volunteer spots to help at four venues over six days in Chicago, March 4-9, 2009.   Since Spring is the season of local Art, Music and Film festivals, we thought we'd share the CIMM Fest signup as a VolunteerSpot best practice.

Using a combination of website links, Cragislist, and inviting volunteers via email, here are a few screen shots to see how she did it. 

Jenny setup her volunteer calendar using Volunteer Spot's simple Plan Now Wizard.  Here's a shot of her signup:

When configuring her signup, she clicked the option to Invite Volunteers with a Link, getting code snippets that look something like this:

The first line, the URL code, she linked to a custom button on the CIMM Fest Website that said , Volunteer Now.  It was formatted just like the rest of the website.

The second line of code, Embed, was an HTML string including the VolunteerSpot Sign up button that she pasted on Craigslist  (in the volunteer section for her city) that looked like this:

______

______

Clicking either the link on Craigslist or on the CIMM Fest website, brought volunteers to this page on VolunteerSpot:

On this page, volunteers enter their email address and are sent a custom sign up invitation from the volunteer organizer.  This step is important to be sure live people (and not spam robots) are signing up for your event.  Below is a screen shot of her actual email invite.  Read it (click to enlarge the image) -- she did a great job customizing the signup message to help volunteers understand what happens next.

Clicking Sign Up Now brings you to our first screen shot in this message.  Volunteers select a day and then can choose specific shifts and venues to fit their schedules.  What happens next:

VolunteerSpot sends automated confirmation and reminder messages to help volunteers keep their commitments.

The volunteer organizer can check volunteer status at any time, can print sign in sheets and rosters and download all the signup information in an Excel spreadsheet.

Let the fun begin!!

Thanks CIMM Fest for showing us all how it's done.  If you've got a community Art, Music, or Film Festival coming up this season -- please let VolunteerSpot streamline your volunteer coordination and make signups and reminders a snap!

Get Started Now

How 2 Upload Volunteer Names to Your Online Sign up Sheet

We've been asked a few times if organizers can upload volunteer names and contact information into the online signup sheet. Although we don't offer the functionality to upload large CSV data files, VolunteerSpot makes it quite easy to capture volunteer names and contact information for your activities. You may either add the names when you invite volunteers with an email, or volunteers may add their own names and phone numbers when they sign up.

To pre-populate your volunteer invitation with names and email addresses, you should COPY the email addresses from your current address book in a format like this:

    Suzy Smith <ssmith@zmail.com>     or     Suzy Smith  [Suzy_Smith@zmail.com]

VolunteerSpot 'reads' the email address inside the symbols < >  or [  ] and will capture and categorize the names/emails for you and enter them into our system.  Be sure to separate each individual by a comma, semicolon, or a new line. 

Another option is to generate a URL Link to paste in your own email, or an HTML Sign Up button to embed in your website.  Volunteers entering through a URL or Sign Up Button, will be asked to enter their OWN names and phone numbers upon signup.  Here's our article about how that works, with screen shots.

Once volunteers have been invited once, you may invite Volunteers from a previous activity. All contact information will be retained from activity-to-activity.

Happy Signups!

Parent - Teacher Conferences: Save Time, Schedule Online!

In January we wrote about parent-teacher conference season and how VolunteerSpot can simplify   conference signups with our free and easy online scheduling tool. 

Since we've had so much interest, we've put together a quick SlideShare eBook to show you how it works including tips for successful parent-teacher conferences.  Please take a look and share it with your teachers and school parent organization. To see it full-screen, click on the icon in the lower right corner that looks like a little projector screen (it's just to the right of the page numbers). When you're done, pres ESC to come back to this post.

 

Free and Easy Online Parent Teacher Conference Schedule Software

View more presentations from VolunteerSpot. (tags: parent teacher)

How To Invite people to Sign Up with a URL link or Button on your Website or Facebook Page

Easier, Faster Online Sign Ups Mean Happier Volunteers!

At VolunteerSpot, we offer three easy ways for you to recruit volunteers and invite people to sign up for your activity. 

1. Enter email addresses directly into our simple planning wizard

2. Paste a general URL link on your facebook page or in your own email message or     email group (listserve) 

3. Publish a sign up button on your website  that looks like this:

 

1. Enter email addresses in our simple planning wizard

If you have a manageable list 50 people or fewer, you may enter their email addresses individually or quickly copy/paste them from another source, like a spreadsheet. Since VolunteerSpot identifies each individual by their unique email address, DO NOT enter group email addresses here such as Yahoo!Groups or listserve group addresses.
 
With this option, VolunteerSpot sends an invitation message with an activity sign up link directly to your volunteers.  If you have more than 50 people, you may paste additional batches of 50 email addresses by accessing your activity in the My Activities tab and clicking Invite.
 

 

2. Paste a URL link in your own facebook page, email message or email group (listserve)

If you are inviting people with a link on your facebook page, click here to see how - it's easy!

If you are inviting people using your email program or a group email list like a Yahoo!Group or listserve, you MUST use a URL link.  Simply copy and paste the unique URL link into your own email message and send it out to your group. (Scroll down for instruction on how to grab a link.) 
 
TIP: Using an optional online service like TinyURL shortens a long VolunteerSpot URL into a much shorter one - and you may give it a custom alias. Try it at www.TinyURL.com

So this:  http://www.volunteerspot.com/login/entry/8-60861881

Becomes this: http://tinyurl.com/CentralVolunteers

3. Publish a sign up button on your website

If you want to invite the general community to sign up for your activity, embed a sign up button on your website by copying and publishing the HTML code string.  It will look like this:

 

Anyone clicking the button may enter their email address and sign up to volunteer. HTML buttons may be embedded in both Yahoo!Groups and ETeamz pages.  Creative VolunteerSpot users have also posted public sign ups on Craigslist by copying/pasting the HTML code string.  Please note, ANYONE may signup through your link -- it's YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to screen and approve volunteers.

 

How do I get a link or button ?

You have two choices for generating a URL link or HTML Button: 

While planning your signup, click the box shown below in the 4th screen of the Plan Now Wizard.  The URL and HTML links will appear on the next screen.  Copy/paste the link or code where you want it. 

 

If you have already planned your signup, open your activity in the My Activities tab.  To the left you will see the option to Invite by Link.

 

 Here's the window you'll get with the URL link and HTML code:

Copy the URL link (the top line) and paste it in your facebook page or own email message. 

Or, embed the HTML code on your site (or even Craigslist) to generate a button that looks like this - and links to your activity.

 

What happens next?

When a volunteer clicks the email URL link or a button on your website, they are directed to a page like this on VolunteerSpot:

 

On this page, a volunteer enters his or her email address and directed to your signup sheet.  Volunteers don't need to register accounts with VolunteerSpot, the system recognizes each individual's email address. 

For volunteers without email addresses, please see this help article on making manual assignments.

May I mix it up?

You bet!  Please use any or all of the signup and recruiting methods that work best for your group.

 

My volunteers are tech-timid, how do I explain the URL link signup process?

VolunteerSpot was built with tech-timid volunteers in mind - our colors and buttons are welcoming and easy to follow. Here is sample text you may copy and customize to explain the process to your volunteers:

We’re using VolunteerSpot (an online sign up and reminder tool) to schedule our upcoming activity.  Please click this link and enter your email to access our signup page. You will NOT need to register an accout with VolunteerSpot:

    <ADD LINK OR BUTTON HERE>
 
If you have any trouble at all accessing the site or prefer not to enter your email address – please email me and I can sign you up manually.

This is all great, but what if I need a lot more help recruiting and screening volunteers?

If you need a wider net for finding volunteers and posting volunteer opportunities, we suggest you post your activities on All for Good, or one of their partner sites that can be found here: www.allforgood.org/posting.

 

 

Happy Volunteering!

Community Garden Volunteers - Make Growing Easier!!

One of the most joyous ways to contribute to your community to participate in a community garden, Whether the goal is to teach school kids about plants or to supplement the nutrition and supply at a local food pantry, gardening connect people with nature and each other. Some of us participate as share holders in community gardens, managing our own plots and sharing in the regular maintenance of the garden overall. With stress over finances and the environment upsetting so many of us, the ability to help to community through gardening is an effort that provides tangible benefits and soothes our souls.

Expanding movements around community gardens to raise food for those in need or as important teaching resources in school have connected many people with the land, with each other and with some ancient technologies they may not be recently familiar with  – shovels, buckets and watering cans. But even traditional enterprises can be improved with a little technology, and when organizing a large group around a big action, VolunteerSpot can make the coordination and scheduling so much easier, that this last bit of stressful activity can be cut down to such a small amount of time, the mud has hardly dried on your boots before the entire schedule is set up and done.

All these projects start with an organizer or a group, and then grow until land is secured and volunteers put to work. Many volunteers are needed to manage the ongoing tasks of the garden: weeding, turning compost, planting or harvesting crops or watering crews to work the hose (lest we lose the food!).

A garden by nature spans a season – depending on your climate it could be a 3 month project or a 12 month one. The great thing about VolunteerSpot is that our tool can make setting up a schedule for a community garden volunteers a much less time consuming task than it is now, and make it super easy for volunteers to help whether it’s a one time project – turning the soil early in the season, or a regular weekly role like weeding with kids.  The volunteer coordinator can set up the schedule so that all the volunteers can see who’s working when (making it easier for friends to find each other) or just show the jobs and how many people are needed in each slot.

Communication is easier with regular emails through VolunteerSpot – especially helpful if a big job suddenly comes up (Bumper Crop – Come Harvest With Us!!) – coordinators can simply send it to everyone who’s on the volunteer list and show the number of new slots, email it out, and get easy click back responses on who’s ready to help.

Growing things is a passion of mine and it thrills me to see this movement growing. I’m happy that VolunteerSpot makes the scheduling so much easier because I get more time to day dream with my seed catalogs!!