Volunteers for Events

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by elgee on October 17, 2008 at 8:31pm

either get them some shwag or free entry fees....offer racers free entry if their significant others will help out in some capacity.
Good luck!
elgee

Permalink Reply by Chris Locke on October 18, 2008 at 5:00am

We do this also, but with promoting 6 cyclocross races a year I think we burn out the volunteers we do get. One or two events in not bad, but come that 6th one...

Permalink Reply by Tom Simpson on October 20, 2008 at 9:18pm

Chris, we're somewhat in the same boat as you, with 5 'cross events and then a bunch of road events in the off season. We have recruited a paid staff over the years that we can rely upon for much of our heavy labor and activities. Some of it is family-based. I've been using family for 30 years, from the days when they would simply show up when I was still competing - and my children have grown up in the event world. I currently have my daughter as head of registration, my partner is my oldest son Alec, and sometimes youngest son Duncan (when he's in the country), my wife runs her own "Pilarcitos Bistro" at events that takes care of feeding the crew, and then one of my brothers and his 2 boys are backbones in the organization - and then we start luring in the friends of family. They have been with us for 6 years - we find that the continuity that an experienced paid staff brings is invaluable.

This is who we pay for services at our events

Registration staff (Greta Simpson +3 persons)
Timing/results (Tom Simonson)
Officials - CR Casey Kerrigan, Judges Ryan Fu, Barry Parks, Melanie Peterson and others
PA/Radios - Jeff Clark
Emporium - Michelle Luster (Merchandise)
Cookie - Becky Simpson
Operations Staff - Danield Ferguson, Josh MacDonald, Jim Simpson, Jasper Simpson, Ollie Simpson, Thomas Abbott, me and Alec and on rare occasons Duncan Simpson
EMT - we aim for 2 per event and consider it a bonus if they never have to break open their bags. Andrew Ames, Maureen Rafferty, and Misty Sholtz

Case in point - we need saturday as set-up day for our events - unload the trailers, build the course, start/finish zone, tents, banners, etc. Our last race sunday finished near 3:00 pm - we parked the trailers in their storage yard and were at home taking Ibuprofren with dinner at 6:15 = a record. We do that with our paid staff - augmented by very hardworking Roaring Mouse team members - who race for free when they work on clean-up - and saturday they also work with us on course build. We donate $1,000 to their team funds at the end of the season. We've built and sincerely value this relationship since 2004 - even though we can;t convince any of them to work with us in the off-season on road activities. But some of them are starting to use road events as off-season traiining for the real season - hope springs eternal! Much of the glue that holds the Mice together is their 'cross guru, Paule Bates - and he just doesn;t get this idea of not riding on dirt - where's the skill in that?

Tom Simpson
Pilarcitos Cyclesports - SF Bay Area
www.pilarcitos.com
info@pilarcitos.com