Volunteers at Every Home on the NZ House & Garden Tours
How Breast Cancer Foundation NZ rosters a volunteer team for each home on New Zealand's largest charity house tours
About the NZ House & Garden Tours
The NZ House & Garden Tours are Aotearoa's largest charity house tours, run in support of Breast Cancer Foundation NZ. Each summer, four locations open seven or eight private homes for a self-driven tour, and the tours raise over $100,000 for the Foundation every year. The tours raise money for BCF, and BCF runs the tours' volunteers on PurposeTech.
2026 marks the twelfth year of the partnership. The 2026 tours ran in four locations over February and March:
- Wānaka – Friday 13 and Saturday 14 February
- Christchurch – Friday 20 and Saturday 21 February
- Taupō – Friday 13 and Saturday 14 March
- Auckland (North Shore) – Friday 27 and Saturday 28 March
The tours depend on hundreds of volunteers, who give a morning, an afternoon or a full day to check tickets and look after the homes and the people visiting them.
The 2027 tours start in Queenstown in February, followed by Blenheim, Hawke's Bay and Tauranga.
Visit nzhg.bcf.org.nz
The Challenge
Every Home Needs Its Own Team
On a street appeal, volunteers book a collection site. On a house tour, every home needs a small team for every shift, checking tickets, keeping the house safe, and managing car parking and the flow of visitors, with a House Supervisor in charge. Across four locations and eight tour days, that adds up to a lot of small rosters that all have to be full before the doors open.
Key Challenges:
- Many small teams: Each home needs its own team for every shift, across four locations and eight tour days
- Overlapping shifts: Morning, afternoon, full-day and Sundown shifts, where one full-day volunteer covers both half days
- A leader at every home: Each home needs a House Supervisor, who meets the homeowners and goes through health and safety the Thursday before
- Volunteers who come together: Friends sign up separately but want to be placed at the same home
- One record in Salesforce: Volunteer details, shifts and hours need to sit in BCF's CRM alongside their Pink Ribbon Street Appeal history
What PurposeTech Provides
Volunteers register at nzhg.bcf.org.nz, a Breast Cancer Foundation NZ-branded portal on the same PurposeTech platform that runs the Pink Ribbon Street Appeal. It has run the tours' volunteer registration since the 2025 season, and BCF's own website sends would-be volunteers straight to it.
Volunteers pick a tour location and a shift, and add the names of any friends they're volunteering with. BCF's events team then places each volunteer at a home, and moves people between homes and shifts from the admin portal as the roster settles. A full day counts against both the morning and afternoon slots, and a waitlist catches the overflow when a shift fills.
Volunteers who'd like to lead a home say so when they register. That interest goes to Salesforce with the rest of their record: contact details, shifts, hours and membership of the campaign for their tour location all sync two-way, so the team works from the same data whether a supporter volunteers for the tours, the street appeal, or both.
Volunteers start by picking their tour location.
How It Runs on the Day
Supervisors meet the homeowners
House Supervisors meet the owners of their home and go through health and safety.
A team on every door
Volunteers arrive at the home they've been placed at and help check tickets as tour-goers arrive. Volunteers at the hub hand out lunches, help with registration and support sponsors.
Homes kept safe, visitors kept moving
Teams look after security, car parking and the flow of visitors through each home. The House Supervisor makes sure everyone takes breaks and stays in touch with the BCF team at the hub.
Hours land in Salesforce
Each volunteer's shifts and hours sync to their Salesforce record, tagged to the tour location, ready for thank-yous and next year's recruitment.
Results
The 2026 tours presented $108,148.90 to Breast Cancer Foundation NZ, for research and for local services in the four tour locations.
One Platform, Two Events
BCF runs the volunteers for both the Pink Ribbon Street Appeal and the House & Garden Tours on PurposeTech, so a supporter who does both has one record in Salesforce.
Rostering in One Place
Registration, placement at a home and changes all happen in the admin portal.
Supervisors Found Early
Volunteers who'd like to lead a home say so when they register, so the team can follow up well before tour day.
Clean Salesforce Data
Contacts, shifts, hours and campaign membership by tour location arrive in Salesforce without manual entry.
Volunteer on the Tours
Give a morning, an afternoon or a full day at one of the homes on the NZ House & Garden Tours.
Every ticket checked and every home looked after helps fund breast cancer research, education and patient support.
Learn more about Breast Cancer Foundation NZ's work at breastcancerfoundation.org.nz
Running an Event With Many Small Teams?
House tours, garden trails, festivals and open days all need a roster for each site. PurposeTech handles registration, placement and the sync to your CRM.