Volunteers - building the ranks!
Hi all! I am looking for some advice from our fabulous parkrun community please.
I am on the core volunteer team at a parkrun with 800-1,000 runners every week, attendance levels dependent on the weather, other regional events etc. Due to the attendance numbers and our use of a double funnel, we have around 50 volunteer positions that need to be filled each every week. We are very fortunate to have regulars on our roster but we do have to go begging to the masses fairly often to makes sure we have all our bases covered.
We’re looking at how we can get more people in our regular volunteer pool, either out of the runners or their families, friends, or other park users. At the moment we send a weekly email appeal (limited to existing volunteers who have opted in) and also do a cheerful appeal in our pre-run announcements (to all and anyone in earshot). We are a welcoming bunch of people and hopefully we make it look as fun as it really is, but we want to appeal to more people!
If you have never volunteered - is there anything that puts you off volunteering? Or if you ever put off volunteering before trying it, what put you off?
Likewise if anyone has ideas for getting more people interested in trying it (other than free cake!) advice would be much appreciated.