Beeple Experiences | Inter and Beeple team up for #EverybodyEverywhere

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Scheduling 800 volunteers, how do you start?

Inter's event team currently consists of six permanent staff members; they are responsible for scheduling volunteers at events. Meanwhile, the organisation can count on a pool of 800 registered volunteers. "Over the years, we have indeed built up a nice and diverse group of volunteers. This group consists of both friends and family of our members, as well as people who came to us via-via or people who call on us at the events we attend. Anyone can apply, experience is a plus but not a requirement! We provide regular introductions to explain our expectations and answer questions," explains Leen.

How do you start planning so many volunteers? "That is indeed a big challenge! Each permanent employee is responsible for his/her events. As soon as we are notified by the event organiser, we create this event in Beeple so that volunteers can apply to come along as chaperones. Some events are very popular: you might get 50 applications for 14 places and it is up to us to start putting the puzzle together. We always ensure a good ratio of new and experienced staff and take personal preferences into account as much as possible," explains Leen.

Also in need of a planning tool to schedule your volunteers?

A registration form, a giant Excel and a bulging mailbox

Beeple did visibly improve the planning process. Before Inter switched to Beeple, volunteers were asked to fill in a digital registration form, the results all ended up in one big Excel file. Volunteers reported their availability via email. That way, there was absolutely no overview of the volunteer pool and their availability ánd the event staff's mailbox was bulging.

"Setting up our environment was a bit of a challenge. In Beeple you can personalise and customise so much that it took us a while to find the best way to work, but once everything was adapted to our needs, it was such an improvement! Thanks to Beeple, we now have a good overview of all our volunteers. They can edit their profiles themselves so the information stays up to date and pass on their preferred region so we can quickly and easily match the right people to the right events," says Leen.

"Our schedule actually always gets filled surprisingly quickly."

Leen: "Thanks to the communication features of the tool, we send out a fortnightly newsletter with the events we are still looking for volunteers for, and if we need someone very last-minute, we send all volunteers in the right region a quick pop-up message. That way, our schedule actually always gets filled. In addition, they also get their briefing automatically forwarded a few days before the event."

Not only did Inter's event staff have to get used to the new way of working, the many volunteers also had to adapt. "The majority were quick to get used to it. We have volunteers who do everything in the app, we have some who do everything on desktop, but there are some even now who email us their preferences. Fortunately, that number is rather limited, and we then manually schedule those ourselves."

A busy summer ahead

With the summer and the festivals approaching, there is a busy period coming up for Inter. "We can always use helping hands. There are often last-minute requests and a lot of events coincide this summer. For instance, during the last weekend of June we are present at Graspop, Pinkpop ànd Werchter, three big bangers for which we need a lot of volunteers. So I am happy to make another appeal for volunteers: sign up via our website by creating a profile in Beeple and just join us!"

Team Beeple is already putting its money where its mouth is: our team is heading to the south of the country in mid-July to roll up our sleeves at Dour Festival. Will we see you there?