Building a Volunteer Team

Photo by Timothy Kempf for CreativeMornings/Oakland

Running a CreativeMornings chapter is best accomplished with the support of a team. Teams both large and small have been successful running chapters. When putting together your team, focus on the most essential roles first, including co-host, photographer, videographer, and event-day volunteers. As you start hosting events and refining the vision for your chapter through real-life experience, you’ll gain clarity on where you may want to add and customize additional roles.

Here’s a sampling of volunteer roles, and how they’re commonly adopted:

Host

Every chapter has one host. The host is the person who signed the license agreement and whose profile appears on the city page. As a host, you’re a leader, a team builder, and an ambassador of your city’s creativity. You were selected as host because CMHQ trusts you to shape the future of CreativeMornings in your city and represent the brand in a thoughtful, inspiring, inclusive, and joyful way.

Co-host

A co-host is a close partner to the host who shares the core responsibilities of running the team. A co-host does not appear on the city page or sign the license agreement. (When planning for leadership succession, also known as “handovers” in CM lingo, co-hosts are often a natural choice.)

Organizers

“Organizer” is the general term used to describe the core members of the volunteer team, who serve an ongoing role in organizing the chapter’s events. Often these team members specialize in a certain area. Some example organizer specialties include managing partnerships, securing venues, creating decorations, designing visuals, overseeing social media and communications, liaising with speakers, running special activities, and managing audio-visual needs.

Event-day or “day-of” volunteers

These are volunteers who help on the day of the event only. They provide helping hands to set up and clean up the event — chairs, decorations, check-in station, breakfast, you name it! Once set-up is complete, they can help run the event. Common event day roles include greeters, check-in, crowd control, connecters, ushers, coffee and breakfast servers, ushers, and sign-language interpreters.

Photographer

The photographer is in charge of shooting beautiful photos that capture the event — the speaker, audience, decorations, and Global Partner thank yous. Share the photography shot list with your photographer ahead of time. And, to have your photographer upload photos directly to your chapter’s Flickr account, share the guide to uploading photos to Flickr (password: goodmorning).

Videographer

The videographer films and edits the talk (including adding the official CreativeMornings intro music), so that it’s ready to be shared on the CreativeMornings website. To have your videographer upload the video directly to the site, share the guide to uploading videos.

Resources

⟵You chapter’s accounts

Getting started checklist ⟶