Terrific Volunteer Recruiting Idea from Canada

Last week when I spent a day coaching arts leaders in the Toronto area, we exchanged ideas surrounding ways to effectively recruit volunteers. Most of the leaders in the room concurred that it’s a huge challenge for them to find good people to fill the roles on their volunteer teams in the area of the arts. After several ideas were shared, one young leader spoke up with a terrific option he tried not that long ago.

First, this arts leader carefully took apart a small sound board. That’s right, took it apart. Then he spread the pieces out on a table at their church’s ministry fair to recruit volunteers. In advance, he decided that anyone he observed looking at those parts for longer than 10 seconds would be a candidate for the production team! He approached those who lingered over the technology, and invited them to a meeting where they could explore possible serving opportunities in the technical arts – and presumably work together to reassemble the sound board! I loved his innovative thinking, and he reported that this method actually resulted in some new team members being added.

So here’s a question to throw out there – what have you done, specifically, that has helped you find and recruit more team members to any of your arts teams? Please jump in and share your ideas, because it’s quite possible someone else can benefit and another arts team can grow…

Comments

[Paul]

Setting: small church (300) on a college campus. All volunteer media/arts/creative team.

We have photography parties. When we first did this, we would pass out rolls of free film. Recently we went with all digital cameras which we borrowed or people brought their own. Over the years, our congregation has had some GREAT photographers (two have shot for National Geographic, many are professionals) and so we have them and other display their work around the worship space. We then give people a camera, a theme and a couple of hours and tell them to shoot though out the city. ["Capture an image that represents forgiveness. joy. pain. loneliness, etc] Sometimes we just have them capture colors or unique textures.

After a couple of hours, we all then come together and have pizza and show our top pictures. Some of the images we may use for future series, etc, but mostly it builds community and we have found that photography is a good "in" to other arts... many are painters, digital artists, etc. We have found this to be an excellent recruitment tool.

This year we are having a 38-hour film shoot. We gather people together on Friday night, have dinner and pitch an idea. [I think this year, it's "stories of life change."] Then people are broken into teams, mixing our current team with new folks. People work 38 hours straight (yep, through the night) to create a short film which we show that following Sunday morning. They must create the idea, script, shoot it and edit it all in that time span.

This idea was inspired by a national campaign built around producing a movie in (in think) 48 hours. Our media folks participated in a competition in Cleveland this year... and we were stunned at how much of a buzz it created. We are hoping the odd-ness of it will be a recruiting tool as well.

[Mark Warnock]

Credit where credit is due: Chris, a worship leader in Orangeville, was the brilliant culprit, and blogged about it on his blog, www.chrisfromcanada.com.

[Chris]

Hi Nancy - again, thanks for taking the time last week to inspire and equip us.

I did share my idea here - http://www.chrisfromcanada.com/?p=91 - and the consensus is that the idea was helpful for other people, so that's always a good thing! :)

[Nancy Beach]

Paul,
thanks so much for those terrific ideas! Your creative approach to recruiting thru photography and film are exciting to hear about, especially in the context of a small church that obviously has an amazing amount of talent. Way to go!

And Chris, thanks for logging in to let me know whose idea it was - I am sorry I couldn't remember your name. It will be fun to see what other ideas yours provokes...

Nancy Beach

[allen]

Thanks, Paul. I'll have to use that video in 38 hours idea. I must find some video production volunteers. The videos ideas just keep coming, but I don't have people to pull them off!