The day itself: welcome, briefing, surprises
Published on September 18, 2026
Everything you prepared is decided in two hours, between the first volunteer arriving and people taking up their positions. Here is what goes wrong, and what prevents it.
A welcome point, not a car park
A volunteer's first quarter of an hour decides their day. You need a marked place, a person expecting them, and three things to hand over: their badge, their position sheet, and who their manager is. A volunteer who wanders for twenty minutes looking for "someone from the organisation" begins the day feeling surplus to requirements.
Badges are printed the day before, in a batch, with the name, the photograph, the team and the role. Position sheets come from a template by mail merge, each one with its position, its hours and its emergency number.
The briefing: ten minutes, not thirty
A useful briefing holds five points: what you are doing, where the toilets and the water are, who you call if something goes wrong, what you do when you do not know, and what time you are relieved. The rest is decoration.
Do it position by position rather than all together: thirty people standing in a warehouse hear nothing, six people in front of their own bar remember everything.
The two o'clock gap
It will happen. Someone does not come, someone leaves early, a position turns out to be heavier than expected. What separates an organisation that holds together is knowing within thirty seconds who is free right now, rather than hunting for a phone number in a message thread.
- Keep a list of replacements for each half-day, named in advance and told that they are on it.
- Carry the list of volunteers present with their phone numbers, exported that morning.
- Let the team managers settle things inside their own team: an organiser who approves everything becomes the bottleneck of their own event.
What happens where there is no signal
On a trail race, a sportive or a large site, half the positions have no coverage. Everything that has to be known out there must be on the paper in the person's pocket: their hours, their instructions, the race control number, and what to do if there is an incident. That is what printed sheets are for, and the reason an online tool is not enough on its own.
Perks on the badge rather than in a notebook
Meals, drinks, passes: this is what creates the most friction on the day, because nobody knows any more who has had what. Perks are declared once per volunteer and drawn down by scanning the badge's QR code; whoever is on the bar sees what is left and serves, with nothing to argue about.
The last ten minutes
This is the most rewarding moment of the whole event, and the one that gets skipped because everyone is tired: saying thank you, individually, and saying when the next edition will be. A volunteer who leaves without speaking to anyone is a volunteer you will have to recruit all over again next year. See bringing volunteers back.
Frequently asked questions
Should volunteers sign in on arrival?
It is useful at large events, so that you know who is actually on site if something happens. A printed list at each welcome point is enough; what matters is that one person knows, at any moment, who is there.
How many managers do you need on the ground?
One per team, reachable, and not holding a position they cannot leave. A manager stuck behind a bar can neither answer the phone nor go and look at anything else.
What do you do about a volunteer who does not turn up?
Nothing on the day except fill the gap. Make a note, and look at it calmly after the event: one drop-out means nothing, three drop-outs on the same slot tell you the slot was badly placed.