How Woodford Folk Festival attracts and manages 2,700 volunteers every year

Following is a summarised transcript of a podcast we recorded with Karen McBride, the Citizenship Manager at Woodfordia, the organisation that runs Woodford Folk Festival and The Planting festival.

Woodford Folk Festival attracts 2,700 volunteers every year, and creates a community of belonging.

Key tips

• Using volunteers efficiently is better than having lots of volunteers

• Empower people to be responsible for a part of the event, and to make decisions relevant to that on their own (this is much more efficient than group decision making)

• Use a system to manage volunteers to reduce the chaos – in Woodford’s case that is department heads who approve and train their own volunteers (volunteers apply for roles at Woodford), and using software.

• Provide very clear job descriptions – if you make the job sound a bit harder than it will be, they will have fun when they realise it’s not as hard as they thought it would be

• Take training seriously – be prepared for your training (don’t wing it). This will reduce chaos and help volunteers feel good because they are succeeding and not making mistakes.

• Make your volunteers love you by serving them, and looking after them as your priority

• Evaluate volunteers after the festival to help get them into the right jobs next year if they want to return.

• Don’t force people to attend meetings if it’s not relevant, and keep communication simple (not overwhelming)

The interview

Linda

Hard working volunteer committees are really struggling in terms of their time, their creative thinking, and their capacity to maintain the energy to keep their events going.

One of the biggest things is the struggle to attract and retain volunteers. Woodford comes up all the time as the Holy Grail of how to manage volunteers.

That's why I wanted to talk to you, the volunteer manager at Woodford Folk Festival, to share what you do at Woodford, and whether there's some key learnings in that for other events.

Every festival's quite different, but it would be great to understand how you've got to where you are, and whether there are any takeaways for other events. 

Karen McBride, Woodford Folk Festival

I haven't been with the festival the whole time – for 15 years, I guess – so I can't speak to how they got going in the early days when the organising group was just 50 or 60 people.

Breaking the job down into smaller pieces, and empowering volunteers to manage them

I think one of the foundational things that makes Woodford work is empowering volunteers – spreading the responsibility out as far as possible, including more people in, and empowering them to run their own little areas.

We've broken down our festival into departments and we have department heads. They choose their volunteers, they run their department, they organize their logistics and infrastructure, and they're given that full responsibility of running that department. This reduces their overall workload because they're not trying to do everything, they're just focusing on one aspect, and that can help with burnout.

At some events there are core people who do everything and wear all the hats. Maybe they need to learn how to separate their jobs out and delegate to others to bring more people in. To say like, Here's a small thing you can do, you can take care of the transport, or you could take care of parking, you could take care of the info booth – you know, just breaking the job down into little bits, and then having a very clear goal of what that department has to do for the overall event.

I could never manage 2,700 volunteers by myself – I've got 150 department heads. They are the people that are doing all of the volunteer management. I support them. In my role as the manager of the department heads I oversee the whole volunteer management system.

Use software to help

We've developed our own software – it's completely decentralizing the way we manager volunteers. A volunteer applies for a position. The application goes directly to the department manager and they screen that person. They check their availability and suitability and then they accept them or not, and then they're responsible for taking care of that person from the get-go.

I really have very little contact with the 2,700 volunteers. I'm mainly more focused on the 150 department heads. The department heads are responsible for finding their own key offsiders, so there's always two people running a department. They share that responsibility on the ground of managing the department, but there's ultimately one person that's overall responsible for that department.

When I came to the festival in 2003, they were doing volunteer management with Excel spreadsheets, trying to get names to put them in the database and last minute calling around to try and fill gaps and whatnot. It was pretty chaotic.

At that time they had 1,800 volunteers. So we realised we needed to develop a system that's going to work for us. They already had the department system, so the software system was developed to match that ethos of ‘Let's break the job down’.

Align the skills of volunteers with their jobs and provide clear job descriptions

From August we're in recruitment days and the department managers call returning volunteers. On October 1st, we start new volunteer applications, and that's a whole other kettle of fish because they don't know the festival, so there's more screening.

I think the screening of volunteers is a key part of it. We do really thorough assessments of our needs. We develop really detailed position descriptions that include the duties of the job, the personal attributes of the person that we're looking for, and the specific requirements. For example, if it's a driving job, you have to be 25 and have a valid driver’s license.

We include the training dates and times, and comments about the roster, like if it's 5 hour shifts or double shifts or split shifts, so when they apply, they know exactly what they're signing up for. I think this is crucial.

If a volunteer shows up for a position or a shift, and it's not what they thought it was, they're quite likely to not enjoy it. There's a great possibility that they're not going to be suited for it. So we do our best to make sure our descriptions are accurate and 100% honest and we probably go overboard a bit on describing it as more difficult than it really is so that they are ready for that. Then when they show up and it's not that bad, they're like, oh, this is a lot of fun. I think that's a key point. 

Under promise and overdeliver is sort of how we do the festival in general. But the same thing with the recruitment of volunteers. We don't we don't pretend that it's going to be easy, especially like our build crew. We say, This is long, hard, you're working in hot summer dusty conditions, it could be wet, muddy, you're going to live on site with really basic amenities, like, it's not great. We try our best, but it’s chaos a lot of the time - we don't sell it as smooth sailing. This is like, come and join the rocky ship, basically. 

Provide support

2005 is when we introduced the software, the structure was already in place. Bill, the director, had that in mind from the get-go. He's always finding people, taking them and saying, This is your responsibility now, and empowering people to take it on. He breaks it down and says, I need you to run the children's festival – it's yours. Come to me if you need me, you know, let's talk about what it looks like. You understand what you need to do, so now go.

That's how he treated me. When I got there, he was like, OK, you run the volunteers program. Come to me if you need me. I know the goal is to get the volunteers in, make sure everyone's happy, and then hopefully they come back again.

From chaos to systems

Linda 

What was the transition phase you talked about, when you got there and there was chaos in terms of the volunteer management process?

That's what I see with most of the events that I work with. It's this chaotic approach of, Oh my God, bring as many friends as you can – we need another 10 people. Joe didn't turn up or 10 people didn't turn up, and then on the day, it becomes crazy because you're shuffling people around. It's tough, and that becomes such a big job on its own. 

How did that transition happen from that into the new one, and was it hard?

Culture of giving and service, and seeing the event as a fun hobby

Karen McBride, Woodford Folk Festival

In the early days volunteers bought their ticket to the festival. They didn't get a free ticket, so there was a core foundation of, We're giving to this because we believe in it. We believe in it so much we're going to give our time and energy, and also buy a ticket. They did that for 10 years. That built a foundation of, Of course, we're going to give to this. We love it. This is our hobby. This is our passion. This is something we believe in, and we want to make it work.

So that still is an underlying spirit of the festival. It's built on giving. We think it's a privilege to give to it. So when someone is asked to do something, the first thought isn't, How can we reward you for doing this? It is, thank you for making this all work. It's the gratitude and the respect.

If you get caught up in ‘We must reward you for every single thing you do’, you're only going to get people that are doing it for the reward, as opposed to seeing the intrinsic reward of being a part of it.

The main reason our volunteers do it is because they want to be a part of it. We do a survey and ask that, and resoundingly, they just want to be a part of this amazing festival that they love so much.

I tell my department heads to take care of them. We have a kind of a service model approach as opposed to a top down hierarchy.

Our organisational chart is a little bit mind blowing. Everyone says, Whoa, that's your organizational chart? It's a bit different to how most organizations structure themselves.

Our idea is that our volunteers are serving our patrons and performers. So there's an outer ring that symbolizes the people that we serve. The volunteers are all the little boxes on the outside, broken down into skill channels. And then the next ring in is our department heads and offsiders, and their role is to serve the volunteers to make sure that they are having a good time, that they've got the training they need, the encouragement, and the support.

Look after your volunteers (as a priority)

I tell my department heads that the best way to keep your volunteers is to make them love you. So you do things for them, you know, you tell them jokes, tell them they're doing a great job. I'm not opposed to bribery with lollies. Some people have a little a stash in their pocket and go around and say to their volunteers, Are you OK? You want a lolly? Or they carry a little spray bottle, cause we're in the Queensland summer and it's very hot, so they cool down their vollies, and ask them if they need to take a break. Making sure that they're well cared for is what our department heads are asked to do.

And my job is to serve the department heads to make sure that they have all the tools they need. I respond to their questions as quickly as possible. My inbox is exploding, but I prioritize my organisers so they're not waiting for me for an answer so that they can continue with their job.

Then our executive team – Bill and Amanda, the director and the general manager – their job is to serve us. I know I can go to them if I need help, but they're really hands off, not micromanaging, and that's a tough thing for people who are in management roles – to empower and trust and step back.

Micromanaging is your downfall because you're not giving that person the chance to shine.

The other thing is we try is add humour into everything. We don't get everything right. We have a lot of mistakes and we're very upfront about our mistakes.

Recruitment

Linda

What about the recruitment phase? Do you have to recruit many department heads or volunteers here? Is there a standard that you go through? 

Karen McBride, Woodford Folk Festival

We have a fairly high return rate with our organisers, like in a in a bad year, I might have 30-35 new department heads.

Anyone who's stepping down will help us to find their successor. Our mentoring and succession planning is not the best. That's something that I would like to improve on. Like when a department head knows that they're going to probably not be there next year, I want them to talk to me first and we can talk about looking for someone together, and then possibly mentoring the new person through the festival.

Some department heads do that. They're not going to leave their position until they know they're going to hand the hat to someone that's going to take care of it. They feel that ownership over their department, so they don't want to walk away.

Some others maybe haven't done it for long enough and don't have the same ethos, or it's sudden, like they just got a job in Argentina.

When I have vacancies in my department head positions I look first to someone who was in the crew and who was flagged as having leadership potential.

Evaluating and turning down volunteers

Another part of the recruitment or the whole volunteer management process is we do evaluations on all of our volunteers through our software, so we know who to reinvite, and who maybe wasn't suited for that role - did the job but it wasn't the right fit. And then there's that teeny, tiny, number of people that we do not reinvite. Last year, there were 38 – it's around 1.2% that don't fulfill their commitment or do something illegal or dangerous, and we just don't think that they're right to volunteer for us.

Sometimes it's a permanent ban, sometimes it's for one or two or three years, and they can have a break and then maybe come back. They're remorseful and understanding what they did wrong. Everyone can make mistakes and come back and be a better person.

But keeping track of that is important. Our role histories go back to 2005 so I can look and see all the times someone volunteered, where they volunteered and what their department head’s comments were about. That helps our recruitment when they apply again. They use their returning codes, the manager will see their application and their role history, so they can say, Oh, this person's a good volunteer. We're continuing to breed the good ones and weed out the not so good ones.

Our position descriptions are so detailed and accurate, and I work really hard with the department heads in August before we launch to try and get them to update them, and make sure they're accurate and correct with the dates and times and descriptions.

People know what they're getting into and when they do their screening, they make sure that that person is who they say they are. You know, they get a good match.

Volunteer management software

Linda 

As I'm listening to you, I can't help but think, you've got such a good system in place, and you've built software. Has there ever been any consideration of providing that to other events as a business opportunity?

Karen McBride, Woodford Folk Festival

It's going to sound weird after 13 years, but it's still in development because we can only afford to do so many tweaks and improvements. You know, the minute you try and sell it to someone, they will be like, Well, can it do this? We don't have the capacity to provide tech support. We have certainly talked about the business opportunity. I always joke with Bill, saying, Please send me around the world and I will sell our system to every festival in the world and we can make a lot of money.

But the reality is, that we're not in the software business. We're in the festival business.

What Woodford struggles with

Linda 

You're obviously doing an amazing job with volunteer management and you have a good system in place. Whenever I'm at event conferences or in meetings with event people, Woodford always comes up as the idol in volunteering, but do you still have some struggles?

What are the key struggles that you have from a volunteer management point of view, and how do you deal with those?

Volunteers with mental health challenges

Karen McBride, Woodford Folk Festival

One of the things that is very time consuming is people with mental health issues, and trying to be accessible and open to all.

20% of people have mental health issues and we bring 3,000 volunteers and organizers together. Do the math. That's a lot of potential for people to not cope well. We have to know our own limitations.

I have a very strong philosophy of there's a place for everyone, even people who have mental health issues. But it's an intense festival and while volunteering is fun, it can also be quite stressful, and it could exacerbate someone's anxiety, if they have that, for example.

We're developing our mental health management plan. We've had some more extreme circumstances where people haven't coped well and it hasn't been managed well on our end either. So we still struggle with how to do that well and with the Woodford compassion that we want to have.

It’s finding that line where we say, We can't have you as a volunteer. It's really hard. And then if you get to that point, ensuring that there is a transition where they're cared for beyond our gates because we can't just drop them off at the gate and say, You're done. We can't take you because you're not coping.

How Woodford supports volunteers with mental health challenges

We've created a mental health statement in the application form where we asked people to tell us their conditions and if they have any medications. We say we want to be accessible to all and work with people. We need to know if you have any mental health issues and what you're doing to manage them and you probably already have a mental health care plan and we need to know about it.

We need you to talk to our doctor and get your doctor or your team of mental health service providers (they might have a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a GP – a team of people who are supporting them). Our team need to know because there's a difference between what's going on in the real world and what goes on at the festival. There's a lot more temptation to go off your meds, for example, because you want to drink and party and you feel safe in this wonderful, beautiful environment.

Trying to get people to stick to a mental health care plan and support them through that is one of the things that we realize is really important.

This year we're introducing having a psych nurse present during the build period. We have 450 volunteers on site and 60-70 department heads working and it's a pretty intense period for three weeks before the festival. As much as I'd love to be that person, to make sure that they get the care they need and take them, you know, to the doctor or to the psychiatrist, I cannot do it. I can't afford to spend 8 hours with somebody who's not coping. So we're going to bring in someone who has those skills.

We did do mental health first aid training with our core staff who deal with lots of volunteers and department heads - we have some area managers that oversee six or seven different teams that constitute maybe 200 volunteers. So they were given the training so they can be of support and step in.

Mental health first aid is not giving people a diagnosis or proper treatment; it's just knowing what to recognise, and then trying to encourage them to get support.

Checking in on the department heads

Linda 

With the department heads, do you have a system during the year where you check in with them regularly on certain things, or are you really just having one briefing session with them and then you're pretty much letting them go and say come back to me if you need anything.

Karen McBride, Woodford Folk Festival

I start in August and then they're technically done in January once they finish all their reporting. In February I chase the department heads to do their evaluations. I can't send the volunteer thank yous until they all do it. I jokingly call myself Karen McNag.

The rest of the year I don't do much with them. I know that they have other lives and I'm conscious of information overload.

In that period from August to January I'll send 15 emails to them and there are less than 500 words each. The last one includes an attachment on how to update position descriptions if they've forgotten because they do it once a year.

Selecting department heads, and their commitment to the festival

There's a training requirement for new department heads. I’ll sit with them for two hours to go through the software and train them up on it, and on the process and the timeline, and what they are going to do in the next four months so they're well aware of what they're getting into and that they're still keen.

As soon as the department head says Ohh, it's a lot of time, then I'm like, Maybe you're not right for department head yet. You have to want to do it – like a hobby that you want to do. You play golf every weekend. You're going to play Woodford every weekend from now until the festival.

Linda 

I like that you only have that period of six months. It's an intense, allocated period of time, so they're not feeling like this is something that's consuming them all year. They know it kicks off in August, they wrap up in February.

I find that with a lot of volunteers, they feel like it becomes a burden on them year round, even though they're not doing a lot, it's still on their minds.

Karen McBride, Woodford Folk Festival

As staff we have a scheduled regular staff meeting, but if the boss says there's no reason to have a meeting, we cancel it – we don't meet just for the sake of meeting.

The small town festival where I worked before I came to Woodford were creating more work for themselves and they didn't need to. They were being very politically correct with consensus based decision making and having a subcommittee to decide whether or not we should do things – and they were disempowering themselves because they didn't let people just decide and go with it.

I ended up leaving because I was starting to hate it because it was so disempowering. I have to do a timesheet. I've been working here for 20 years, and you need to know what I do on a daily basis? 

At Woodford they just say, Come to me if you need me, and you're doing a great job.

Youth volunteering

I'm developing a youth volunteer program. It's not something I would do without talking to the bosses and asking if they are cool with it. This is something I think we need to explore. I think it will be great for the future – 13- to 15-year-olds are looking for something. I'm strongly passionate about youth volunteering. I've just been given the go ahead, so we're going to go for it this year. 

Empowerment around decision making

Linda 

So it's a whole philosophy for Woodford – empowerment – giving people authority.

I think that's one of the biggest challenges with a lot of events. I think it comes down to a lack of capability on how to run a festival – they're often just a community member – they jump in and they do their best, but they're just creating more work for themselves. 

Karen McBride, Woodford Folk Festival

There are lots of good points for having a board driven festival, but the idea that a group of people are always going to be making all of the decisions, I think it slows it down. It's like trying to get 12 wheels to turn the same direction at the same time.

Bill had a vision and he was able to mobilize people and say, You do that for me, please now. The event I used to work for was lacking that one person. I had a sort of small dream to be that person, but I couldn't break the culture of being a board driven festival, and that no one person makes any decisions by themselves.

They involve people in decision making and therefore they're not very dynamic. A decision that would happen at Woodford overnight would take a year at that event.

Quick decision making

It was a turning point for me when we were struggling in our build period with volunteers showing up to get a free feed, and not working.

How do we stop the bludgers? We need a system. Our systems manager at the time was very intelligent. She laid the foundation for our software. She's like, Well, we could make meal cards with barcodes and we could scan them and you only get your food once you scan. I spent all night laminating 300 meal cards, and then the next morning the volunteers arrived and got these cute little meal cards.

We said, If you have a meal card you get fed. Don't lose your meal card. You can't use it more than once per meal. Make sure you eat 3 meals a day. We care about you and we want you to eat.

And they were like, Oh, wow, cool. And then right away, they were also like, Oh, that person doesn't have a meal card – get out. They self-managed and policed and got rid of the bludgers because it was like, Well, I'm working, I get fed. You're not working, get out.

Within a year the culture shifted. But I know that at the event where I worked before, that would have been a subcommittee and the subcommittee would have spent as much time talking about the issue as they would have spent talking about who should be on the committee and when should we meet? I start to pull my hair out – I just want to get stuff done. 

Linda 

As you're talking, I'm thinking about a conversation I had with Greg Donovan who runs Big Red Bash as a private commercial operation. He can decide overnight to spend thousands of dollars on Jimmy Barnes if that's what he thinks is going to be right for the festival. Whereas a lot of other festivals, they are really bogged down by unnecessary governance – just layers and layers of it.

Karen McBride, Woodford Folk Festival

Then they complain about how much work it is for three day festival and I'm like, you make that work. It’s bureaucracy and it's not efficient.

We can't afford to be inefficient. Every festival is the same – we’re putting on an event with this much money, so everything has to be as efficient as possible.

Reducing the number of our volunteers

My big thing is constantly asking department heads to reduce their volunteer numbers to be as efficient as possible.

There are some people who go, Oh, the more volunteers we have, the better. No, the more efficient you will use your volunteers, the better.

I went to a really good workshop by Volunteering Queensland by a guy who was talking revolutionarily in a sense that your volunteers are doing stuff that paid people could be doing, so you should treat them like paid people. You can ask them to do stuff that you would ask a paid person to do.

We have plant operators in our filtration plant, they're chemists, they're testing water to make sure it's potable, they're volunteers and it's a high risk thing. We don't have a problem with asking someone to use a high level of skill to do a job as a volunteer. It's not, oh, we can't ask a volunteer to do that. We can't work them too hard. No, they're earning a ticket. They'll feel useful.

I can't stand seeing volunteers sit around. If I walk into a place, I'm like, ‘You're sitting around. Come with me.’ I can't stand seeing people sitting around. You’ve got to be busy. 

Linda 

The first thing event organisers say is nobody wants to volunteer. But when you really dig into that, it's not that nobody wants to volunteer, it's that you don't have a proper volunteer management program in place that embraces the opportunity for people to volunteer. Volunteers don't want to come and sign up for something where they feel like they've got to sit in a meeting every month for the sake of it

Woodford’s top 3 tips

Linda 

What are your top three volunteer management tips for regional events? 

Karen McBride, Woodford Folk Festival

1. Provide clear job descriptions

Being really clear what they're being asked to do so they know what they're signing up for.

It’s critical that you assess your needs and be clear what you're asking people to do. It takes thought about what each team is going to do/ What are their jobs? What are the hours of operation? How many volunteers do you need? People will sign up because they know what they they're getting into.

2. Provide training and support

Provide a lot of training and support so that your volunteers can succeed in their jobs.

It's not hard to do dishwashing, but there is still going to be a system that they have to learn. They have to be taught how to do it so that it's done right, and then they can feel good about it because they're not constantly making mistakes.

Clear, good training comes down to your volunteer leaders, your department heads or whatever you call them. Ours think about a clear training plan, like having a curriculum – they don't just walk in and make it up. They have a plan that they go through as they train their volunteers.

Start with an ice breaker. This is the job. These are the hours. These are the things you need to remember to bring with you when you come to your shift. And does anyone have any questions?

It's not hard, but I think a lot of times people put that priority down low and then you'll find volunteers not doing the job right and then it causes more chaos. And that's not fun.

Team leaders have to be really organised. It's not motivating if managers are disorganised and not ready for their volunteers.

3. Serve your volunteers

Make them love you, you're serving them. Make sure they have a good time, that they're well supported, that they have what they need.

You know, if they forgot their water bottle, maybe go and get one out of lost and found, clean it, and give it to them. Just whatever to make sure that that volunteer is ok.

Treat them with respect as well. Like we'd ever say, Just a volunteer can do that job. We know that they're equal to paid people. That's key – to treat them with respect.

Ratio of managers to general volunteers

Linda 

How many volunteers on average do your department heads manage? 

Karen McBride, Woodford Folk Festival

Around 20, 25 would be average.

As soon as it gets over 40, we break it down. There were 80 in one team and so then we broke it down into zones – West zone, South zone, etc – with one person overseeing and making sure that all four teams were working similarly and following the same system.

Linda 

When you get that big of a crew, you need structure and systems. If there's a challenge, you put a system in place and that usually overcomes that.

Karen McBride, Woodford Folk Festival

And try to limit the amount of group planning and decision making – that's not efficient.