Courtesy Little Rock CVB
Local volunteers often make the first impression for a host city. the amount of downtime volunteers get. “If people are volunteering their time for you, make sure they have something to do when they get there, because if they arrive and stand there and watch everyone else work, they wonder, ‘Why am I giving up my time?’” he said. One of the best ways to create a winwin-win — an ideal staffing situation for your volunteers, your staff and your attendees — is to take advantage of the high skill level of these volunteer corps and integrate them into your event in more ways than the usual registration staffing, way finding and swag-bag stuffing. Roitman-Booth had one program in which the event staff did not have enough of their own organization’s volunteers to introduce speakers and breakout rooms, so she selected some of her more eloquent members, who had had previous professional careers involving public speaking and set them up to intro-
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Managing Meetings
duce speakers and be the emcee running each room. The Little Rock CVB prides itself on training its team to integrate into incoming meeting groups by asking the right questions of both event staff and attendees, whether it’s giving restaurant recommendations or serving as greeters in the convention center lobby to welcome attendees with a beverage and a smile. But one of the most creative and highly appreciated ways it has incorporated volunteers into events is for the final send off. “We have them at the airport on the day of departure, so they are the last face you see when you leave, saying, ‘Thank you for coming. We hope you’ve enjoyed your stay and that you’ll tell someone else about it,’” said Alan Sims, vice president of sales and services for the Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau.
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