Recruiting the Best Committee

One of the questions I get often is what to do to recruit the best committee... Obviously, there is no one right answer, but, here are a few thoughts on the subject:

1) Ask people you know and trust – Building your Relay For Life committee with people you know and trust is a great start – surround yourself with people you want to work with.

2) Ask every committee member to bring at least one additional committee member on-board – Your committee members are the best source of other people – ask them to bring someone they know and trust on-board!

3) Post for committee members and volunteers on high-traffic internet sites – Post at sites about volunteer opps with your Relay. Sites include:

a. http://www.volunteermatch.org - Volunteer Match - Largest online site with lots of volunteer opportunities – great place to post – you can expect a lot of responses

b. http://www.1-800-volunteer.org/1800Vol/OpenIndexAction.do - 1-800-Volunteer.org - One of the biggest sites for volunteers

c. http://www.craigslist.org - Craig’s List lets you post all sorts of things, including advertisments looking for Relay For Life volunteers – lots of volunteers look on Craig’s List

d. http://www.networkforgood.org/volunteer/ - Network For Good - One of the biggest sites for volunteer connections

e. http://www.servenet.org/ - Servenet.org - Big site of volunteer opps

f. Google Base - lets you upload volunteer opportunities so they show up on Google! Great idea!
http://google.com/base/help/mktgvolunteer.html?utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-na_us-google&utm_medium=ha&utm_content=volunteer&utm_term=find%20volunteers

g. http://www.bethecause.org/vopp/volunteer.php - Be The Cause - Another site to post volunteer opps, with volunteer registration – particularly strong in Kansas, California.

h. http://www.idealist.org/

i. http://volunteer.monster.com/ - Monster.com’s take on volunteer opps – again a good place to post – they are collaborating with idealist.org for this project.

j. http://www.planetfriendly.net/volunteer/

Your post could look something like this:

WANTED: Volunteers for the American Cancer Society Relay For Life of Towson, MD @ Towson University – Friday May 13 6pm -Saturday May 14^th noon, 2003. An overnight event where volunteers walk/run to raise money to fight cancer. Volunteers needed to serve on event planning committee, put together teams for the event, as well as volunteer the days of the event for setup, support, and break-down. Relay For Life is a fun, carnival-like atmosphere where we will raise over $100,000 in the fight against cancer! YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE AND HELP US FIND A CURE! Contact towsonrelay@yahoo.com or call Sue at 410-555-5555 for more information.

4) E-mail everyone you know – Send out an e-mail soliciting interest in involvement in Relay For Life – you never know when someone has a link to cancer – by e-mailing those you know, you might find someone who has a personal connection and wants to be involved, but has never been asked. You can’t know till you ask!

5) Make The Weird Ask – Each week – make one “Weird Ask” – ask someone you wouldn’t think to ask otherwise. :) For example,

a. if your event has a lot of folks associated with the local hospital on the committee and heading up most of the teams, ask your committee to ask one person in the coming week who they meet while they are shopping – the grocery lane checkout person, the person who does their oil change, the person at the drycleaners, or the waitress who waits on them at lunch.

b. If your event is mostly people you work with, ask each person to ask someone they are friends with that you all don’t work with to join the committee, captain a team, or volunteer the day of the event

6) Post Flyers Around Town – Have a Spread Out Saturday, where your committee spreads out all over town and posts flyers, looks for corporate sponsors, and puts out coin cans. Also have them look for event volunteers, committee members, businesses that want to have teams, and donation items for your event (and for a silent auction if you are having one).

7) Promote Your Best Team Captains From the Previous Year – Ask your strongest team captains from the previous year to join your committee, bring what they did that worked, as well as their ideas for improvement. Great team captains recruit great teams… chances are they will be great at recruiting other team captains and will have some good connections. Team captains that join your committee will often work to get their team to “spin-off” into multiple teams

Just a few thoughts to get you started... Please post responses on other ideas or email rflvolunteer@gmail.com !