Finding volunteers for your event
Once you have found your volunteers, you will want to train them on how to host events for your community. By giving them a strong foundation, they will soon be ready to start hosting their own events!
3 key steps for training your event volunteers
When your volunteers are first starting out, give them a period of time to get up to speed. Bring them into the planning process for your next event and have them shadow you throughout.
- The best way to train new volunteers is to create a simple handbook for them to be able to reference when they have questions. This can include things like:
- Your mission
- Ideas for events
- FAQs
- After you have chosen a few volunteers, you can get on a call with them to connect with them and connect with each other. This cohort can work through their first event together and keep each other updated with best practices, questions and their successes.
- You can set up a group, Messenger or Whatsapp chat for them to connect. By setting up different channels for connection you can help them build community within the community by providing a place where your team can share stories and best practices and bond over challenges. You can even get everyone together for an event (either online or off).
Another great way to support your team is to assign a mentor to guide your new volunteers. Pair an event volunteer with a newbie to help bring them up to speed and get them through their first few events.
Set up Messenger or a Whatsapp chat to keep everyone connected and keep communication open with your volunteers.
Tools to help you train your volunteers
Units can be used to organize groups of posts into sequences that can be revisited anytime. They’re great for setting up lessons, or educational materials. Units can help you train your new admins giving them the resources they need to run a group in one place. For more on how you can use units in your community, here.
How to set up units:
- To use Units, you need to change your group type to “Social Learning” this can be done in setting under “Group Type”
- Next go to the Units section and create your first Unit. Name your unit and decide if this is optional or if members of your group need to see it
- From here, you can create your Unit such as “Community Manager Guides” that can feature handbooks or other resources for your volunteers
Messenger can help to keep your team connected. You can use chat to escalate issues, share best practices and stories from the community or keep each other updated on events in the group
How to step up a group chat:
- Open the messenger app and go to the compose button
- Here you can search and add multiple people to your chat.
- Once you have added your team, you can name this chat and add color or emojis to make it your own!
