Festivals & Events

The challenge

Festivals and large-scale events depend on volunteer armies. A single music festival might need 400 volunteers across 15 different roles — from gate marshals and ticket scanners to artist liaison and waste management. The complexity multiplies fast:

• Diverse roles with different requirements, briefings, and shift patterns
• Team registrations where a group signs up together and needs to be kept together
• Multi-day schedules with overlapping shifts and rest period requirements
• Last-minute changes as the event approaches — stage moves, weather delays, capacity adjustments
• Day-of chaos when volunteers don't show, need reassignment, or can't find their station
• Sponsor obligations — corporate volunteer groups need special handling and reporting
• Professional expectations — event volunteers represent your brand to paying attendees

Event organisers often cobble together Google Forms, Eventbrite, and WhatsApp groups. It gets the job done for small events, but at scale it becomes a coordination bottleneck that directly impacts the event experience.

How PurposeTech Event Volunteering solves it

Flexible registration flows

Support individual, family, and group registrations. Volunteers can sign up solo, register their family, or bring a team — all through a single branded registration page that adapts to their needs.

Group and family registration

For events that attract families or corporate sponsor teams, PurposeTech Event Volunteering provides a dedicated group registration flow. Participants choose their registration type, add their group members, and pick a site or role — all in one seamless process.

The group registration flow supports:

• Family groups — add adults and children by name, with headcount tracked automatically
• Corporate teams — enter an organisation name, team name, and team size
• Site selection — groups pick their preferred location, with capacity shown in real time
• Single confirmation — one email per group with all member details and site assignment

This is especially valuable for festivals with sponsor obligations — corporate teams register as a group, and their attendance is tracked separately for sponsor reporting.

Role-based scheduling

A festival campaign maps roles to the platform's hierarchy — each role becomes a job with its own shift pattern and capacity:

Create distinct roles (Gate Marshal, First Aid, Setup Crew) as jobs within the campaign, each with their own:

• Shift patterns — staggered start times, different durations
• Capacity limits — 50 gate marshals but only 6 first aiders
• Custom registration fields — first aiders need certification details; setup crew doesn't
• Email content — each role gets its own briefing via shift type email notes

Volunteers browse available roles and sign up for ones that match their skills and availability.

Team management

When teams register, coordinators get a real-time view of team composition, confirmation status, and attendance:

Team leaders can manage their own members, reducing the admin burden on your event team. Corporate sponsor teams can be managed through Adopt-a-Site (glossary) to reserve specific roles.

Multi-day campaign support

Set up your festival as a single campaign spanning multiple days:

• Volunteers build their own schedule across the event
• Different roles on different days — someone can do setup on Thursday and gate marshalling on Saturday
• The roster view organises shifts by day, so coordinators see a clear daily picture
• Rest periods can be built in by controlling shift times and capacities

Automated briefings and reminders

Each role can have its own communication track via shift types:

These are configured once per shift type and sent automatically with every confirmation and reminder email.

Live roster management

On the day, your team leads have a live roster view:

• See who's confirmed for each role and shift
• Handle no-shows by moving volunteers from over-staffed roles
• Add walk-ins who show up eager to help
• Export PDFs for areas with limited connectivity (backstage, remote gates)

Post-event reporting

After the event, generate reports for:

• Sponsors — hours contributed by their team, roles filled
• Venue/council — total volunteer hours, safety compliance
• Internal — role fulfilment rates, no-show analysis, areas for improvement

Operational timeline for festivals

Who uses this

PurposeTech Event Volunteering is used for events ranging from community festivals to national-scale programmes:

• Music and arts festivals with 200–2,000 volunteers
• Cultural events and community celebrations
• Charity galas and fundraising events
• Environmental summits and awareness campaigns
• Food and wine festivals
• Community markets and fairs

Get started

Planning a festival or event that needs volunteer coordination? Get in touch to see a demo, or explore the Quick Start Guide to understand the setup process.