Music Festival Volunteer Data Collection.

Every music festival relies on volunteers to help make the events successful and run smoothly. Organisers have different methods of calculating the number of volunteers they will need and this can vary between a few hundred and over a thousand. How can organisers recruit the numbers of volunteers they need and what data should they collect from applications.

A large-scale music festival requires meticulous planning and volunteers are a key element of this process. It can take some time to assess requirements based on the number of festival-goers attending to calculate the duties, rotas and number of volunteers required. Using a combination of experience and common sense it's possible to create schedules of duties, timings and potential drop-outs or no-shows. If the planning and assessment indicates that 500 volunteers will be required to perform identified duties over a 3-day event then the organisers probably need to recruit 600 volunteers.

Recruitment Timing.
Most music festivals have a formal application process with some operating all year round whilst others will delay recruitment until 6 months before the live dates. The easiest recruitment strategy is to contact previous volunteers and give them first refusal for forthcoming events. Recruiting year round can achieve good numbers of applications but circumstances change and it's likely many will drop out nearer the festival dates. This may be why many events start recruiting closer to event dates making the applications more recent and reliable.

Data Collection and Applications.
There will always be a wide range of duties required on a typical festival site and can include entrance gates, parking, security, cleaners, servers, booths and first-aiders. Allocating duties can depend on experience and some applications can ask very detailed questions but organisers should consider carefully what data is essential and what is nice to have. Organisers should avoid questions that do not comply with current DEI (Diversity Equity and Inclusion) principles and other discriminatory related topics. Too many applications ask for age among other particularly sensitive discriminatory questions. Organisers should perhaps avoid asking for irrelevant data like photographs and medical conditions for example.

GDPR. 
All data collection should comply with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and many festival organisers are still collecting and storing way too much data on their volunteers. The principles of data collection are that it should be relevant and collected in a fair manner as well as being accurate and stored confidentially. Festival organisers should ensure that their volunteer data collection complies with GDPR so that they avoid any breaches. This has implications for holding onto data for an excessive period, it’s probably acceptable to use the data collected from a previous year when recruiting for future events but if the volunteer does not respond or they are no longer interested the data should be deleted.

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 dedicated 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 Peter Olexa via Pexels

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