Do you want to work with volunteers on your projects?  

CAKI has been inspired by volunteer champion Esben Danielsen’s tips on how you can ensure the commitment of volunteers to your projects. Suppose you don’t already know Esben Danielsen. In that case, we can tell that in his 15 years as development manager at Roskilde Festival, and together with the rest of the management, he has been responsible for 30.000 volunteers. That is probably more hands than what you need right now for your project. But the good advice is just as good regardless of the number of volunteers. Read more here:

The vast majority of projects within art and culture use voluntary work to a greater or lesser extent. Many are even entirely dependent on people working voluntarily. This applies to everything from Roskilde Festival to the realization of artist-run exhibitions, concerts and performances.

What characterizes volunteering is:

• Volunteers are not paid for their work
• You do not have any contract with volunteers
• Volunteers choose to be part of your project because they think it’s cool or exciting

In the following mini-guide, you will get four tips on how to work with volunteers to realise your projects.

Four tips to engage the volunteers:

Tip 1

There has to be a difference between being a volunteer and being a user, guest or audience

It is essential for the volunteers to distinguish between being a guest and being a volunteer. Therefore, you should consider creating a sense of ownership in your volunteers. This can counteract any feeling of having only been invited along to fix your project. It is far more appropriate for the volunteers to feel that they have been invited because their contribution is significant and because they can influence the project – preferably in a community with you and other volunteers.

Tip 2

Listen to your volunteers 

Listen to the volunteers’ feedback and experiences. They often have unique knowledge about your project, and it is not enough that you become wiser by listening to them – it also helps to strengthen their commitment to the project. If, for example, you have to realize a more extensive project with many volunteers, it might be a good idea to organize yourself in a Facebook group. On the other hand, if it is a smaller project where you have to work closely together for many hours, it could be an opportunity to meet face-to-face beforehand so that you can see each other in the eyes before kick-off. It may also be that you can invite your volunteers into your studio or workshop and get to know them better – and like to show off your project or work and share your thoughts.

Tip 3

How much time are the volunteers expected to spend?? 

Sometimes as a volunteer, deciding how much you should contribute can be challenging. For example, is it ok to only participate a little, or is it required to put many hours into the project? Do you have more influence if you are involved a lot than if you are only engaged for a few hours? Do you get more responsibility or access to more exciting tasks if you put a lot of time into the project? Especially on large projects such as festivals or film production, where it may be challenging to get hold of many volunteers who have time to put many hours into the project, it is essential to open up the participation of volunteers who can only put in a few hours in the project. Here it might be an idea to open a new group for “helpers” – volunteers who want to put in a few hours now and then. If you want to be successful with it, it must be visible that it is perfectly fine to be involved only a little at a time. In any case, it is always essential that you are clear in your communication about what you expect from the volunteers.

Tip 4

Know the four basic types of motivation

When you have got volunteers to participate in your project, they must continue to be motivated for their participation and hence also their work effort. Esben Danielsen talks about four models for how you can encourage the volunteers:

• The social participants: They are motivated by the social gathering – by the community. What you do is not very important as long as it is done together.
• The professional participants: They want to be challenged and assigned responsibility in their tasks.
• The co-determiners: They are motivated by being able to influence the project – whether it is minor adjustments, execution or feedback on a problem.
• Identity participation: They identify so much with the project that they can be part of the story themselves, as they almost feel the project as their own.

In conclusion, Esben Danielsen says that it is never the motivation of the volunteers that is wrong with it. Instead, it can be:

• The way it is organized
• How you, as a project manager, motivate
• Whether you have found the right volunteers for exactly your project

Volunteering is a massive resource in artistic and creative projects and productions. If you need to discuss how you can work with volunteering in your work, you are always welcome to a meeting at CAKI, where we can explore together what might be the way forward for your involvement with volunteers.