Big Bag Pack Christmas Week!

balls89

Hi all,

I'm currently doing a fundraising internship with a small charity. Just yesterday, I managed to get us a bagpacking day in a big, very busy store during Christmas week. Which is great! However, it's a 15 hour long day, and we need about about 15 bagpackers at any given time as there's 22 tills!

It's great news as we'll certainly raise a lot of money, I'm just very anxious, as I really want it to go well. I (actually none of us) have had to manage an event on this scale before, so I was wondering if any of you had any tips. If we do 5 blocks of 3 hours, it means we'll need like.... 75 volunteers! And I honestly don't think we'll recruit 75 volunteers. Should we do 4 blocks of 4(ish) hours? How many hours can someone do before they are entitled to a break?

Also, the store is very strict on no water, no food, etc. If we do like 3 blocks of 5 hours, all volunteers will need a break, but how can I give 15 volunteers a break if there isn't 15 volunteers on hand to cover those on breaks?

What if I need someone to do e.g. 12-4pm, but they can only do 12-3pm? I got the impression that the store owner wanted us all to be consistent and 'look neat' throughout the day, as in there should be 15 bagpackers at all times, rather than dribs and drabs of people.

Am I over-thinking this? I'm just very conscious that this goes well, for the charity, and well, it might mean the difference between me being employed or unemployed at the end of the internship.

I'm writing up a little document about how to talk about our charity if shoppers ask about us (there are some specfics!), an hour-by-hour excel chart so I know where everyone is (or should be) at all times, another excel sheet for the fundraising buckets, and creating a volunteer sign up sheet as we speak.

If anyone can help, I'd really appreciate it, anything at all. Even if the advice seems obvious to you, it mightn't be for me. Share your wisdom, oh wise ones

Meathlass

Bag packing is physically very tough OP. I've done it several times and 2 hours per shift is really the limit. Not a hope you will get anyone to commit to 5 hours but maybe they might do 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening.

The store should be able to give you a handout of their rules for bag packing.

If you think you can't get the requisite number of volunteers then you need to act now. Talk to the manager and see how many tills he wants covered. What hours does he want covered? We generally tend to do 10am - 6pm on Saturdays as stores are very quiet outside those times. If you need to do the 15 hours then you probably won't need as many tills covered at 2pm as you will at 8am or 7pm.

- Advertise on Facebook/twitter etc for volunteers
- Contact your local volunteering centre (if you have one) to provide manpower
- Speak to a local school - we regularly get help from transition year classes
- Make each volunteer in the group commit to signing up 2 extra people to help
- You need to regularly empty the buckets (every 2 hours or so) and have somewhere safe to take and store the money (not your car)
- Have t-shirts or viz vests advertising your charity and identifying the volunteers.
- Make sure you've enough buckets for your volunteers

Any other queries just ask. I've ran a bag pack before during Christmas week over two different stores at opposite sides of town and think I've encountered all the problems!