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The Music Festival Volunteer Ambassador.

Andy Robertson

Every music festival relies on an army of volunteers to make their events happen but there are often some volunteers with more responsibility sometimes referred to as volunteer ambassadors. The ambassador will have a different set of duties and festival organisers use them in a variety of ways to perform additional tasks not done by volunteers.


The volunteer ambassador is not paid a salary and will benefit from the usual advantages that every festival volunteer gets however, they will be among organiser's most trusted people with many being given management responsibilities. Most music festivals have a full-time salaried volunteer recruitment and training manager but it can be difficult for a small full-time team to manage hundreds of volunteers and organisers prefer to use a select group of ambassadors to assist. 

Off-site Duties. 
Ambassadors may be given training and volunteer management duties or appointed as team leaders because of their experience. Their experience and skills should make them ideal people to motivate and manage those new to volunteering. Any training workshops will usually take place months before the event dates but the organisers may ask their ambassadors to attend other key meetings with vendors, sponsors and contractors on an ad-hoc basis. If a music festival venue is in a city the ambassadors may be expected to represent the event during marketing and PR activities among the local community perhaps distributing promotional materials and engaging with local people to address any concerns.

On-site Duties. 
Ambassadors are often given responsibility to manage teams of volunteers on-site during the festival but they are also required to perform additional duties that newer volunteers will not be expected to perform. As ambassadors for the festival, they are sometimes asked to perform marketing and promotional activities on-site to get festival-goers to purchase merchandise or tickets for other upcoming events. The ambassadors are also given duties to manage information centres and provide useful help and assistance to festival-goers.

Recruitment. 
The specification for becoming a volunteer ambassador will depend on the requirements of the roles identified by festival organisers. When recruiting volunteer ambassadors' organisers are looking for substantial music festival experience where candidates have previously worked at festivals either as a full-time employee and/or a volunteer. Their experience and references will need to back up their application and many organisers choose to recruit their volunteer ambassadors outside of the normal volunteer application process. 

The knowledge and experience required for a volunteer ambassador exceeds that of the typical volunteer and whist the titles used for different types of volunteers varies from event to event many music festival organisers prefer to have a clear differentiation between volunteers and their more experienced volunteer ambassadors.

For festival organisers planning their events using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need manage every aspect of their event logistics including a comprehensive volunteer management module. The guys who are responsible for this software have been in the front line of event management for many years and the features are built from that experience and are performance artists themselves. The Festival Pro platform is easy to use and has comprehensive features with specific modules for managing artists, contractors, venues/stages, vendors, volunteers, sponsors, guestlists, ticketing, cashless payments and contactless ordering.

Photo by Matheus Bertelli from Pexels

Andy Robertson
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