Organize Activities and Get More Volunteers with VolunteerSpot

This post is part of a paid campaign with Acorn Influence for VolunteerSpot. All opinions are my own.

The most important lesson I’ve learned about getting groups organized: make it as easy as humanly possible for people to respond and get involved.

If they need to wade through a bunch of reply-all emails or have their phones buzz with a bunch of nonsense they don’t need to know from every other member in a group, you’re going to lose a bunch of people and even annoy those who are anxious to be involved. If they can click on a simple link and sign up, rather than having to call you or wait until they see you at the next practice or school event, they’re much more likely to sign up (or at least, I know I’m way more likely to do so- we’re all busy enough already).

Whether you are trying to organize a snack schedule for soccer, get volunteers for your school’s Fall Festival, schedule conferences, or whatever else you need to plan, you want to make it as easy as possible for people to sign up and for you to quickly be able to see who has signed up (the organizer of an event doesn’t want to have to wade through emails and texts, either, or have to reconcile when multiple people signed up for the same time/thing).

VolunteerSpot is a great way to do this. You can easily create an invitation where people can sign up for time slots or to bring certain supplies.  Here’s what one might look like for a family potluck:

Your invite can be emailed to individual people or you can choose an option for a shareable link, in the event that you want your invite passed along to others who might be interested in attending or helping out.

You can get a lot more complicated with your sign-up, like for a school Fall Festival, with people signing up for all sorts of different activities and time shifts, too. Plus, with VolunteerSpot, for next year’s Fall Festival, you can use the “Pass the Baton” feature and either reuse (and edit) your initial sign-up or pass it along to the new Fall Festival organizer so they have something to help them plan instead of starting from scratch.

Once you get your activity set up, VolunteerSpot will send reminders before each assignment and alert you of last-minute cancellations. So you don’t have to be the one to remind your volunteers of what they signed up for, what they’re supposed to bring, or when they’re supposed to be there. It does it for you.

For me, when I’m on the sidelines at my boys’ soccer games, the only thing I want to do is watch their games, not try to figure out which families are able to make next week’s tournament. VolunteerSpot can help with that.

So far, I’ve only tried the free version of VolunteerSpot and there’s a lot you can do with it. You can head over and try it out. It’s also available on moble, to make it even more convenient.

What events would you use VolunteerSpot for?