[Organizers] Re: How does your dance do volunteers?

We _always_ thank volunteers during the announcements, though not always by name (shy people don’t like being in the spotlight). We’ve tried comping volunteers dances or reducing their fee. Since we switched to a sliding scale and never turn people away who can’t afford anything at all, we decided to simply tell volunteers to use that to their advantage and pick their own entry fee. They seem to like being comped however we do it, but the sliding scale system is better than trying to decide which evening the door sitter(s) get comped. No one has ever complained of being undervalued or overworked. Indeed our opposite problem is (rarely) sometimes we get too many volunteers and that makes our call for help seem like a sham. I try to discourage people from just showing up to help; I prefer people answer my call for help in advance. This also helps us gauge if we need to look more urgently for help at the last minute. We maintain a separate mailing list for volunteers so we aren’t annoying the larger dance community with extra emails. \Bob Peterson Boston Gender Free Contra Dancers he/him