We just finished our springfest this past weekend. We were also running short of volunteers. We contacted the High School ROTC. Their commander sent 18 ROTC cadets to help us for the day. Since it is a Military structured organization we only had to meet with their senior officers and let them know what we needed they handled the rest.

We allowed them to eat and drink what they wanted while they were there. When the fest was over they continued to help with clean up. It worked out very well and they were very well mannered young men and women.

I am always here and glad to help. I get the RSS Feed right to my computer. Also, you can email me direct if that is easier. I am happy to share info with you. A few months ago I hosted a best practices workshop for festivals. My co-President and I went to most festivals in the County this year to see the strengths and weaknesses plus I did extensive research about festivals at other schools. Learning from each other is the best!

Thanks Gary.

This is my 1st yr in charge of volunteers; usually, I am doing something else and never see that aspect.

I love your list and will try to meet w/ something local chapters.

In the past, we rely on the room coordinators to get volunteers from each room but for some reason, there has always been issues.

Keep coming to this board because I guarantee you, I will need your help.

I would recommend the following groups:

Boy Scouts/Cub Scouts
Girl Scouts/Brownies
Local non-profits-Humane Society, Relay for Life team, etc
Any sports teams
Beta Club/Honor Society
Any high school or middle school clubs
Local places of worship (of course they would need to keep religion out of it)
Senior Citizen Groups

We used a combination of the above groups for our Fall Festival. We also would put games near each other that could likely help each other or cover if there was a shortage. For example, a Ring Toss and a Football Toss could go side by side.

At our school we ask each classroom to be responsible for an activity. We have more classes than games so we have several classes assigned as floaters. Another local school assigns each teacher a game and puts the responsibility on the teacher to get volunteers since often parents are more responsive when the teacher asks rather than another parent asking.

Hope this helps!

Gary Parkes, President
Carmel Elementary School PTA
Woodstock, GA
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Spring Carnival is approaching and I have been assigned the task of finding volunteers to man the booths. From what I understand, the issues that we have had in the past are:

1) volunteers giving away free tickets to friends/family
2) volunteers not showing up which leads to other issues
3) not enough volunteers

Our school's carnival is nice but we have always had an issue recruiting people to volunteer. Any suggestions? Can you name some groups that may be in high school that may want to earn community service hours? Thanks.