LearnHub

I hate to be the first one to post, because as the Conference Chair it may appear that I’m trying to be coercive about this. (smile) I know a lot of people sign up as volunteers for festivals and special events so that they can come for a discounted (or often free) admission. Heck, that’s how I personally afford a bunch of entertainments around town! However, all around the globe, Limmud organizations ask for both time and money from their volunteers. This is in part because these are entirely volunteer-run organizations: we rely on a large community of people who are willing to give of their time to make the event possible, and who ultimately come to feel a keen sense of ownership over the festival. But time alone doesn’t cover the cost of the venue, lunch, etc., so people still need to contribute money for their participation.

How does that sit with other people?

In my opinion it is OK to ask volunteers to pay a reduced fee. Mind you, I do think that it really depends on what are the expectations from volunteers. If a volunteer is expected to work all through the day and not be able to enjoy even one of the sessions it would hard to convince me that this volunteer has to pay 36$ for this, especially if we’re talking of young people. A fine balanced should be reached and we should look at what we are expecting from different volunteers at different times. How about making it progressive? The more you do the less you pay, with a minimum charge of say $15-20 (to cover the cost for the parking and the meal).

Ok, I just got back from Limmud UK last week and I have a profoundly new appreciation for what they’ve done in terms of building volunteer culture and active participation on the part of community members. Over there, everyone is invited to volunteer, even a few minutes or an hour onsite. They do daily volunteer drives to get people to help with tasks around the conference and they have all kinds of opportunities posted for people to help with the planning of future conferences. For example, you can sign up to volunteer five minutes a week, or ten minutes, or an hour a week, depending on your availability. Everyone pays to attend and pretty much everyone ends up volunteering! It’s an incredible community of willing participants, who all take ownership of the whole experience. The only people who pay less than full price are people who come on “working” scholarships, and those people are requested to put in more volunteer service (e.g., an allotment of three or four hours a day). Their roles are pre-determined, not as spontaneous, but it’s a great way for people who can’t afford the full price to come to conference. As we move toward a multi-day conference in Toronto, I think we should really rethink the subsidy culture we’re creating here for volunteers—it’s an amazing thing to see all these people putting their time and money into a collective community-building project. I’m all for it!!!

Having said that, we can still develop scholarship programs for streams of volunteers. For example, in England, they use the YAD volunteers, a group of young adults who do service work, for about four hours a day. We could consider working with other community groups, like Hillel or UJA Impact (Young Adult Division), to develop special tracks for their constituents to participate in our conference in a meaningful, short-term capacity.