Volunteering at a Community Festival: What the Day Is Actually Like

Event volunteering is the least intimidating way to get involved with a nonprofit and the one most people never try, usually because they do not know what they would be signing up to.

The jobs are unglamorous and easy to learn. Setup, which is tables, signage, fencing and vendor pitches, and happens hours before anyone arrives. Gate and ticketing. Guest services, which is mostly directions and lost property. Vendor support, which is fetching things for people who cannot leave their stall. Breakdown, which is the least popular shift and the most needed.

Breakdown deserves a word. Plenty of volunteers arrive for setup and disappear by mid-afternoon, which leaves a small, tired group doing the heaviest work at the end of a long day. Volunteering for breakdown specifically will make you extremely popular.

Hours are longer than you expect. A festival that runs one until eight means volunteers from around ten to about ten. Most organizers will take a half shift and would rather have you for four reliable hours than eight distracted ones.

What to wear: closed shoes, something you do not mind ruining, a hat. Outdoor venues like Howard County Fairgrounds are grass and sun with limited shade. Bring more water than seems reasonable and eat before you arrive, because the moment you plan to grab food is the moment something needs doing.

What you get out of it, beyond helping: you meet the people who run the organization properly, in a setting where everyone is working rather than networking. Most long-term volunteers and quite a few business supporters started at an event.

If you want to do it with JEPF, sign up through the volunteer page or leave your details on the events page and say which event you have in mind.