February 19, 2026

Episode #202: Volunteer Events without the Headaches – My Training Takeaways 

Volunteer events can be some of the most powerful tools nonprofits have, but they can also be some of the most stressful. 

In this episode, Tobi Johnson shares key takeaways from a recent high-energy training inside the Volunteer Pro Impact Lab, where she taught nonprofit leaders how to run volunteer events that create real impact without chaos or burnout. 

Whether you’re hosting corporate teams, community groups, or special one-time volunteer days, this episode will help you rethink how you design, plan, and follow up on events so they become strategic relationship-building opportunities, not just logistical headaches. 

You’ll learn how to move beyond simply “getting the work done” and instead use volunteer events to grow advocates, strengthen partnerships, and create long-term support for your mission. 

Volunteer Events – Episode Highlights 

• [02:20] – Why Volunteer Events Matter (Visibility, Funding, Advocates) 
• [03:17] – Why We Dread Them: Common Pain Points and The Need for Systems 
• [04:26] – Training Context: What the Seminar Covered for One-Time Groups 
• [07:28] – Takeaway #1: Events as Strategic Relationship Builders 
• [09:18] – Takeaway #2: Predictable Problems and Setting Boundaries 
• [12:38] – Takeaway #3: Win in the Planning—Projects, Registration, Expectations, Risk 
• [21:02] – Takeaway #4: The Volunteer Experience Matters as Much as the Work 
• [23:54] – Takeaway #5: Follow-Up Is Where Relationships Grow 
• [26:10] – Final Reflection 

Volunteer Events – Quotes from the Episode 

“The fact is volunteer events should be viewed as the beginning of a relationship, not the end.” 

“When volunteer events feel chaotic, it’s usually not because the volunteers don’t care. I think sometimes staff make that assumption. It’s because the systems weren’t as designed to support success.”

Helpful Links

• Volunteer Management Progress Report  
• VolunteerPro Impact Lab  
• Episode #115: Your Quick Guide to Amazing Volunteer Events  
• Volunteer Nation Episode #083: Make the Most of Corporate Partnerships with Alyson Gallaher 

Contact Us

Have questions or suggestions for the show? Email us at wecare@volpro.net.

Rate, Review, & Follow Us on Apple Podcasts

If you love the content Tobi shares on the Volunteer Nation podcast, consider rating and reviewing the show! This helps us reach more people – and help more good causes just like yours – successfully engage enthusiastic, dedicated volunteers with less stress and more joy.

Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate with five stars. Then, select “Write a Review” and let us know what you loved most about this episode!

Also, if you haven’t done so already, follow the podcast so you don’t miss a thing. Follow now!

Subscribe to ProNews: Our Weekly Resource Roundup

If you’d like to stay up to date on all new podcasts, blogs, freebies, and deals posted on our Tobi Johnson & Associates and VolunteerPro websites, subscribe to our weekly ProNews newsletter.

Every Wednesday, we’ll send you a digest of our freshest content, plus a bonus! Once you confirm your subscription, you’ll get our [Free eBook] The New Volunteer Manager: The First 90 Days.

Episode #202 Transcript: Volunteer Events without the Headaches – My Training Takeaways 

Tobi: Welcome everybody to another episode of the Volunteer Nation Podcast. I’m your host, Tobi Johnson, and I just jumped off of a training with our volunteer Pro Impact Lab members. It was so much fun and there was so much. Energy in the room. I mean, maybe it’s because I hadn’t trained for a few weeks. I don’t know, or I had a passion for this particular topic. 

It’s something that I think we often aren’t able or aren’t willing to set boundaries around, and it just creates so much chaos in our lives as leaders of volunteers. So, I wanted to talk about it. So today I’m talking about volunteer events without headaches, and I’m. Sharing my training takeaways from the training, I just jumped off of about an hour ago with some really good takeaways today. 

Things that can help you reframe the way you think about volunteer events, even the way you think about how valuable they might be. I’m going to leave it at that because I’ve got some really good info today and just to. Do this and have these events with more joy, less headaches. So, let’s just get to it. 

Also, in the show notes, I’m sharing a couple of other Volunteer Nation episodes. One is 115, your Quick Guide to Amazing Volunteer Events. Now, this isn’t just volunteer groups who are volunteering for you. This is sort of an overview or a guide to really volunteer events in general. And then back in Volunteer Nation episode 83, I talked about how to make the most corporate partnerships with Allison Gallagher. 

And many of these events are corporate partnerships. You know, volunteer events are one of the most requested things Nonprofits get asked to host. Corporate teams, community groups, youth organizations. Everyone wants to help and. It can be a hassle, but it doesn’t always have to be. These events can generate visibility, funding, relationships, future volunteers, and community goodwill. 

Real mission impact, and as I stated and got all excited about on the seminar, you can build an army of advocates who understand your cause, understand your organization, and you know what? Nonprofits need advocates right now, and so we want to make sure that your community’s educated about what you do, and there’s no better education than firsthand experience. 

And so, I think events can offer that as well. However, many volunteer leaders secretly dread events. We all have a little bit of love hate relationships with our volunteer events unless we’re pulling them off effectively, but the reactions and challenges I was hearing. On our SEM during our seminar today with the Volunteer Pro Impact Lab members, they took a lot of staff time. 

It’s chaotic. They don’t always produce meaningful work, so there’s a mismatch between what the organization, the corporation or the community group or the school group, what they want and what you have to offer. They distract from core volunteer programs. Lots of people will cancel at the last minute or not show up. 

So, it can be really stressful. And these events, I would say are challenging. However, they also can be very. Powerful, but only when they’re designed intentionally. So that’s why we presented this seminar. I presented this seminar inside the Impact Lab called Managing One-Time Group, volunteers, effective Hassle-Free Systems for Corporate and Community Groups. 

This was a direct request. We do a. Twice a year, we do a survey of all our members and we ask them, what are you working on this year or the next six months? What? What do you need help with? What can we provide resources for? And so, we, this was one of those big top questions. So, I wanted to help our members learn how to leverage volunteer groups without headaches. 

So, I covered how group volunteer experiences can be high impact and offer lasting returns for your organization, but also reminded everybody that the right systems, if they aren’t in place, these events can also become a logistical nightmare. For you and the teams you hope to host, it’s not just a hassle for you, it’s often a hassle for the team. 

So, in this session, I taught practical strategies to design, prepare for and manage one-time groups, whether they’re corporate teams, community groups, school projects, or special event volunteers. I wanted to make sure that our members could run events that offered a smooth experience and delivered real value for both sides. 

And I wanted to help everybody reduce chaos, streamline planning, and create consistently positive group experiences so that they could foster long-term relationships from these one-time engagements. Ensuring that every volunteer and organization leave motivated and ready to return. What’s better than doing volunteer events when people want to come back, and they’re already trained? 

That’s good news. It was such a successful session, and it resonated with so many people. I mean, the chat was on fire. I asked everybody throughout the seminar to share their ideas, and there were so many ideas. To supplement what I was training that I ended up cutting and pasting the chat and sharing it in our replay recording library, along with all the other resources for that seminar. 

So, it was just so much fun. Everybody was having a great time. Everybody’s asking questions, sharing what they do, because. A lot of people in the Impact Lab already organized volunteer events, but they were ready to learn more. And so, it was a great community and collective learning experience. So, I thought in this episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast, I would share. 

Some key takeaways from this training that I thought might be insights and different ways of thinking and seeing and doing so. I pulled out five key takeaways from the training today that I thought might help you reframe and rethink how you do volunteer events. So, let’s jump into it. There’s a lot of power and potential involuntary events. 

So, let’s get into it right now. So, my key takeaway number one is that voluntary events are strategic relationship builders. I think they’re not, people often think of them as days of service that they are like getting something done, but they’re also entry points. Into longer term relationships, their brand awareness opportunities, their donor cultivation opportunities, their talent pipelines and their community trust builders. 

So there’s some heavy lifting going on that you may not realize there’s long-term value. They might lead to corporate sponsorships. I remember getting donations from corporations after the fact, not even knowing that our event was going to generate that. They can lead to skills-based, volunteer resources, employee giving programs, board and committee members, repeat volunteer engagement, and stronger community reputation. 

Again, so many powerful ways to generate resources. So, a volunteer group. Volunteer events can be resource generators long before the events or long after the event is over. I want you to stop and ask yourself, are you asking right now how much work will get done? Or how much of a hassle will this event be when you think about throwing your next group volunteer event? 

And could you reframe this as to what relationships could grow from this experience? What relationships could grow from this experience? Because I think if we start to reframe this, we can see there’s a lot of gold hidden in these events that we’re not mining, right? So that’s my first key takeaway. The second key takeaway is the challenges are real, but they’re also predictable. 

So, volunteer events do feel hard. They feel hard because last minute attendance changes; groups arrive late or unprepared. Projects are not sized properly. Staff are overwhelmed by supervising large groups. There are weather disruptions and all kinds of other like things we don’t control in the world. 

Volunteers are disengaged or get bored during the event, so they don’t. You know, they don’t, they’re not productive. There’s registration, chaos, there’s communications breakdowns, there’s all kinds of things that happen during an event. Volunteer events can feel harder because they involve large groups of people at once. 

They’re high visibility. They compress planning into short timelines, and they often include people unfamiliar with your mission. So, there’s a lot you have to do to prep people to get them in the right frame of mind and the right. Sort of intentionality to the event. But here’s the deal. The good news is that most of these challenges are not people problems. 

They are system problems. So, there’s, during the training, we went through the systems that you need to put in place to pull off an effective headache-free event. You know, volunteer events can be hard, but they don’t have to be; the problems are predictable. I also shared a matrix of four really common problems and what you can do to prevent them, and then also how to manage them on the fly when they happen because everything, we can’t prepare for everything. 

So, we’ve got to have two different strategies going. One is how do we predict and prevent, and the other is how do we respond on the fly? And how are we prepared for that? So I try to help folks think through those two different ways of solving problems. So that’s key takeaway number two; the challenges are real, but they are also very predictable when it comes to events. 

Just think about the last event or the last few volunteer events you’ve run. I’m sure you have similar issues. We also had a long conversation about setting boundaries and what’s realistic to do. And I talked a lot about and really modeled the way to have conversations with people about boundaries and expectations, and, you know, everybody was like this. 

Yes. You know, in the chat, because you’ve got to be assertive about your organization’s needs. You got to be protective of your resources and it’s not free for all. People have to understand you’ve got a job to do and your number one job to do is meet. Meet your mission with the best resources and match what community needs are and your organization’s needs. 

So, it was fun for me to talk boundaries with everybody. Everybody was really like high fiving that one because it’s hard to set boundaries, and sometimes it’s just helpful to hear how someone else does it with calm and composure. But also, with being clear and firm. Yeah. So, let’s talk about the next. Key takeaway. 

Voluntary events are won and lost in planning. 80% of your success happens before the e event even starts. They come from planning. That success comes from planning, preparation, and communication. So we really work through it. The different stages of planning. So, I had a four-stage process. I like to break things down into simple frameworks that people can follow step by step, because the Lord knows we don’t have time to keep complicated things in our heads. 

We’ve got to hit the ground running. We don’t have extra time. And so my framework was really just basically, what do you do before, during, after, and how do you build that long-term relationship? So planning. Folks think it. It includes logistics, but it really includes more than logistics. When you’re planning an event, it includes designing the right project. 

In the first place. So choosing the right project and matching that project with the organization, and I talked about the different ways, the different types of organizations and what they’re really looking for in an event that might be different than another kind of group. What a corporate group is looking for is very different than what a school group is looking for. 

And so, what are those things? I also talked about scalable creation and designing scalability. So scalable tasks, using modular design to build in flexibility. So if you think about it, can your event scale if an extra 10 people came up. Showed up, or if 10 people didn’t show up, you know, can it expand and contract using modules, so like different stations or different teams that can expand and contract. 

So, we talked a lot about that modular design. The second thing that is planning more than logistics is creating a smooth registration system. We talked about the differences between group and individual sign-in methods and, and why automation and technology is so important. And in the workbook for this training, I talked about the different types of software tools and what they might do and how to choose a particular software and what functionality you’re looking for. 

Because automation is. You know, half the battle. It’s really helpful to have technology save you time, because if, you know, I made the point in the training because if you, hey, if you count out the hours in your week that you spend manually managing things that could be done by technology, if you prorated your hours and figured out, just did the math and figured out how much time that that wastes. 

For this software that costs you $29 a month, $19 a month. $30 a month; you’re saving money immediately when you have software that automates. And one of the biggest challenges to organizations is when they continue to use manual systems, especially in event volunteeringig groups. 

It’s just nuts to try to do it manually. Another area of planning that that’s more than logistics is setting those expectations. And I talked about boundaries a minute ago, but not only logistics, but. What does success actually look like? And explaining it to both and agreeing upon it with both the, the project leader from the organization, the corporation, the school group, the community group, but also explaining it to the volunteers once they show up, what, what is, at the end of the day, what’s success going to look like? 

The other thing we talked about was transparent group and team leader roles. Just making sure everybody understood who’s doing what. And then the fourth area where planning is included more than logistics is building emergency and contingency safety and risk management plans, and how to manage liability considerations. 

We dove a little bit deeper into all of these things. We do a fair amount of training on risk management in inside the Impact lab, and so we have a framework for assessing and. Identifying priority risks, and then we have four different risk mitigation strategies that we were talking about. It’s not a fact that risk will happen; risk is always there. 

I mean, you can’t run an organization without risk. It’s how we manage it that decides our success. And organizations that are really risk averse simply don’t know how to do risk management or don’t know how to do it well. So, we talked about that. So, you know, the bottom line really is that great volunteer event managers are not great problem solvers. 

They’re great problem preventers through proper planning, including logistics, of course, but all of the other things I talked about. So, let’s take a quick break and I’ll be right back with more of my top takeaways from. My recent Volunteer Pro Impact Lab seminar, in fact, as recently as an hour ago on how to pull off smooth volunteer events. 

I’ll be right back. Hey, are you looking to upgrade and modernize your volunteer program? Or maybe you’re building one from scratch, and you’re just not sure where to start? If so, we’ve got the perfect resource for you, the Volunteer Pro Impact Lab. Having built several direct service programs from the ground up, I know that it doesn’t happen by accident. 

It’s a clear process that takes careful attention with a focus on impact. In the end, you need a system in place that’s clear, standardized, efficient, and that gets results. In addition, and maybe this is the most important, you need a volunteer program design that directly contributes. To your organization’s most critical goals. 

That’s where the Volunteer Pro Impact Lab comes in. When it comes to effective volunteer engagement, our bespoke volunteer strategy Success path model, which is the heart of our resources and strategic advising, will help you transform your volunteer strategy from fundamental. To a fully mature what’s working now approach and all in less time with our online assessment, you’ll quickly gain clarity on precisely where to focus your efforts, and we’ll provide recommendations for the exact steps needed for sustainable growth. 

Regardless of how large or small your organization is or what your cause impact area or focus is, our program development and implementation support model will help you build a strong foundation so volunteerism can thrive at your good cause. If you are interested in learning more, go to ball pro.net/join and we’ll share how to get started and what’s involved. 

Again, that’s ball pro.net. Forward slash join. Okay, we’re back with my top takeaways from my very recent volunteer Pro Impact Lab seminar. I just got off the call about an hour ago, and I want to continue with my key takeaways on how to pull off smooth volunteer events without headaches.  

Well, let’s review the key takeaways so far. So key takeaway number one was volunteer events. Our strategic relationship builders. We need to reframe if we’re going to do volunteer events and get the most, we can out of them. It’s a good idea to reframe how we think about ’em. Key takeaway number two is that the challenges are real and predictable. 

The challenges are real and predictable, and we can solve from for them ahead of time. So, we need to be good problem solvers, but also good problem preventers. And then key takeaway number three was volunteer events won or lost in planning, and that was a lot of what that training was about. Every slide was basically a checklist. 

Even though I had a handout that was a checklist, it was just a lot of checklists. So, let’s get into key takeaway number four. The event experience matters as much as the work. The event experience matters as much as the work that the volunteers are doing. Community building is really important to your event. 

Many organizations will focus heavily on task completion during a voluntary event, but they often overlook it. All of the other things that are going on, like volunteer connections, there’s, they’re not facilitating storytelling. They’re not helping volunteers make meaning of their experience, whether they’re 16-year-old or an 82-year-old. 

Everybody’s making meaning about their volunteer experience, so we need to facilitate that. There’s a lot you can do to build a community during your event. One way is by sharing or or by planning some engagement practices, like explaining the mission impact during orientation, then asking the group to go around and share. 

Why does the mission make sense to them. We can help people make meaning by celebrating and helping people see progress through the event. We can encourage team self-reflection as we do our wrap up activities. I like to have kickoff rituals and wrap up rituals there. When you look at sports teams, they do this. 

They have a kickoff, you know, a huddle. They have a huddle at the beginning and a huddle at the end. It happens, right? So provide opportunities for volunteers to connect socially and then have some staff or volunteers that are assigned to Rome during the event. You can call ’em engagement ambassadors, whatever. 

I like to call ’em. I was calling ’em high fivers just to, you know, attaboy delivery to just go th go around and help. Solve problems and provide support, but also to really make connections, which with each and every volunteer, so they are seen and heard, people will return to your organization. And that one-time event will bear long-term fruit because of how they felt, who they connected with, and whether they saw the impact of their work. 

In other words, whether or not they were making meaning during their volunteering. And so, you know. Just remember that it’s more about only the tasks getting Jo, the job getting done. It’s about the relationships and the community that you are building. So, I recommended everybody just ask at each step of the way, each design decision for their event. 

Ask just, is this building or breaking community? It’s a big question that I keep asking over and over again lately because I’m just obsessed with that as the litmus test for what we do in volunteer involving organizations. All right. I want to share my fifth and final takeaway. Follow up is where the relationships grow. 

So true value happens after the event. So strong follow-up will include impact, reporting, recognition, and gratitude. Easy pathways to stay involved, invitations to future volunteer opportunities, relationship building with group leaders, and corporate partners. And in the training I went through a variety of different ways of, for following up with folks and we talked about, and one of the resources I gave was swipe file with all of the emails up, leading up the reminder emails leading up to the event, but also a few after the event. 

The fact is that volunteer events should be viewed as the beginning of a relationship, not the end. So, you know, we often think of, you know, one-off episodic volunteering and volunteer events as sort of not the ideal. The ideal is a long-term volunteer that comes in every week, et cetera, et cetera. But I think we need to re. 

Think about the value that we’re assigning things. Because first off, anytime anybody’s giving us their most treasured asset, which is their time, we need to be grateful, and we need to find the best way to leverage their support. We need to make sure that volunteers sacrifice time, they’re sacrificing other things they could be doing in their lives. 

That makes sense and that it also has power and so, so it was a great episode. I had a lot of fun. I, I mean seminar, I should say. I had a lot of fun. There was so much energy, and I think everybody kind of walked away being reenergized by the comments at the end. Everybody was high energy and you know, I loved it when I deliver a seminar where I have all my energy and it’s just like 110% energy going, you know, we don’t always have exactly the same energy every day. Today was one of those high energy days, so it spilled over into the podcast, and I wanted to share some of that today. So for final reflection and e encouragement for you. 

Just remember that voluntary events are powerful community builders, and that most challenges that you will experience with events are predictable and solvable ahead of time. That planning and communication can drive success, that the volunteer experience matters as much as productivity, and that longer term relationships are the real ROI of voluntary events. 

When volunteer events feel chaotic, it’s usually not because the volunteers don’t care. I think sometimes staff make that assumption. It’s because the systems weren’t designed to support success. So with the right preparation and mindset, volunteer events can become some of the most valuable and energizing work you can do. 

So just take a moment to reflect on your own volunteer events, the ones that you organize or the ones that you’re planning to organize. Are they designed for impact or just activity? What’s one system can you improve before your next group event? Yeah, and you know, if you’re interested in learning more about how to throw a, an awesome volunteer event, the replay recording for my seminar, managing One-Time Group Volunteers, effective Hassle-Free Systems for Corporate and Community Groups. 

It’s already posted inside the Volunteer Pro Impact Lab. If you’re struggling with volunteer events, now’s the time to get some practical training and resources. I taught in the training; I talk about pre-event planning and registration. I talk about designing group projects. I talk about onsite management and flow. 

I talk about post-event follow-up and engagement, and I cover it all. I mean, it is, it is complete training. You also get with that training, I, I just posted the project start guide. Every one of our seminars has a start guide associated with it so that our learners can move from learning to implementation right after the training. 

We’re not about theory, we’re about practice At Volunteer Pro, I also created a group volunteer event checklist for pre, during and post. So, you can just quickly check off what needs to be done, and then I created a corporate and community group partnership email swipe file this year. We’re really focusing on what are the time saving resources, not only resources, we have fantastic hundreds of resources across the volunteer lifecycle to support our members, but really this year we want to focus on resources that help save time. 

And so, the swipe file really helps people think through. How many emails do I send? What do I say in these emails? And just get it knocked out. And then because the chat was so on fire, I encouraged everybody to post ideas, and I promised that I would cut and paste the chat transcript with the replay. 

And so, I did that. And then I posted a link to our risk management training as well as a partnership, MOU that we have in our resource library. So, when the folks are partnering with groups to bring on events, they have the agreement. Transparent and in writing, it’s an important thing, so. If you want access to this training and all the resources as well as the wisdom of the community, all you have to do is join the Volunteer Pro Impact Lab. 

Just go to volpro.net. Just click on Impact Lab at the top of the menu, and you’ll go to our website at $59 a month and even less if you become an annual member. It is well worth it. The price for just this one training. I mean, really there We have hundreds of trainings and replay recordings and resources. 

So thanks for joining me. I hope this is helpful to you. If you’re one of those people who organize one-off events, there’s always things to learn. There are ways of thinking about events. I hope my key takeaways were helpful, and if you want our support. Join us inside the Impact Lab. I’m telling you it is the best group of people. 

I was telling our group today that they are the most talented group of people because I watch our members grow their leadership skills. It is so gratifying to see people get additional FTEs in their department, get more funding, get invited to meetings, get included in the organization, and strategic plan. 

All of the things that our markers of influence are members are developing, and at the same time, they’re building skills and strategies and building maturity. Of their volunteer program. It is. It is a program and a community that I’m very proud of. We’ve been in business for over 10 years and there’s a reason why. 

So I hope you’ll consider joining us. You hear us every week on the podcast. You hear us talk about the Impact Lab, but I thought I’d give you some practical takeaways from one of our recent trainings. Because it was just So much fun and such a powerful experience. So I hope this has been helpful. If you think it might help a friend, please let them know about the Volunteer Nation Podcast. 

And if you liked it, please give us a rating. We like those five-star ratings because that allows us to be shown to other people that might benefit as well. And if you have comments, we’d love to hear ’em. All right everybody. We’ll be here next week, same time, same place, and I hope to see you then on the Volunteer Nation. Take care, everybody.