Recruit standing volunteers

Event volunteering hangs off a single event. A volunteer ask is the standing version: a venue recruiting door and bar help across its whole calendar, an organisation running an ongoing street team, or an individual host gathering a few regular hands. You post an ask, share its public link, and organise the people who respond — optionally handing each group to a coordinator who runs it without needing admin access to your organisation.

For one event's shifts and hours, use recruit and manage volunteers instead. This article is for recruiting that isn't tied to a single event.

Post an ask

Where you start depends on who the ask is for:

• Your organisation — in the admin sidebar, open Volunteers and switch to the Asks tab, then click New ask.
• A place you manage — open the place in the admin dashboard and use its Volunteers tab.
• Yourself — from your own admin area, the same Volunteers → Asks tab lists asks you host personally.

Give the ask a title and description, pick a cadence — One-time, Ongoing, or Recurring (a label that tells volunteers what to expect; ongoing asks simply stay open until you close them) — and optionally set a date window and a capacity. The same knobs you know from event volunteering are here: auto-approve sign-ups, and an SMS reminder opt-in.

A new ask starts as Draft. Set it to Open when you're ready to take sign-ups. Paused and Closed stop new sign-ups but keep everyone already on the roster; Archived hides the ask from your dashboards. You can reopen a paused or closed ask, but archiving is final — post a fresh ask instead.

Add roles and share the link

Click Add role to define what you need help with — a name, optional description, and an optional slot count. Roles can carry a default hours value, which is stamped onto a volunteer's record when you check them in (handy for asks without fixed shifts, where there's no scheduled duration to measure).

Every open ask has a public sign-up page at its own link. Copy it from the ask's management page and share it however you like — social, email, a QR code on a flyer. Anyone with the link can apply with their email address; they don't need an account. Signed-in volunteers are linked automatically.

Organise responders into groups

Approved volunteers sit in the ask's general pool until you place them. Create a group (a named bucket — "Saturday bar crew", "North door") with an optional capacity, then assign volunteers to it. You can move people between groups or release them back to the pool at any time.

Groups are the unit you hand to a coordinator.

Hand a group to a coordinator

Each group can have one coordinator — a person who reviews, checks in, and manages that group's volunteers without holding an admin role in your organisation. On the group, enter a Coordinator email and save. If that email already has an account, they become the coordinator immediately; if not, they're sent an invite to finish setting up an account, and they coordinate the moment they do.

A coordinator can only act within their own group: they review and check in their members, and pull unassigned approved volunteers out of the general pool into their group. They can't edit the ask, create roles or groups, assign other coordinators, or see any other group's volunteers. Read coordinate a volunteer group for the coordinator's side.

Review, check in, and broadcast

The ask's management page gives you the whole picture: a Pending review queue, every group with its coordinator and fill count, and the general pool. Approve or reject applications, check volunteers in, and move people between groups from here.

Use Broadcast to send a one-way announcement — a schedule change, a thank-you, a call for extra hands. As the owner you can target the whole ask, a single role, a specific group, or just the general pool. Coordinators can broadcast too, but only to their own group. Broadcasts go out by email and as in-app notifications, and respect each recipient's notification preferences.

What can go wrong

• Volunteers can't reach the sign-up page — the ask must be Open. A draft, paused, or closed ask shows a friendly "not accepting sign-ups" state rather than a form.
• A coordinator sees "forbidden" — they tried to act on a volunteer outside their group, or to change the ask itself. Coordinator authority is scoped to their own group by design.
• A name is already taken — role and group names must be unique within an ask. Pick a different name.

To reward volunteers with a free ticket, see comp rewards for volunteers.