Volunteer Recruit Retainment

From UKRag Guides (wiki)

This is the most up to date version of the "Raggie Retainment Guide" as it was called and was most recently compiled by Sarah Crombie (aka Sazcrom)..

Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 Hang on a minute! Rags? 1.2 The purpose of Rag 1.3 One Size Doesn’t Fit All 2 What can volunteers do? Why do they do it? 2.1 Why do people join RAG? 3 Fun! 4 Democracy and Representation 5 Communication 5.1 Meetings 5.2 Socials 5.3 Websites 5.4 E-mail 5.5 Letters 5.6 Text messaging 5.7 Phone Calls 5.8 Flyers / Leaflets / Posters 5.9 1 to 1 meetings 5.10 Most important 6 Clique vs' Openness 6.1 The upside 6.2 The downside 7 Delegation vs. Ownership 8 Pre-recruitment/truly prepared for volunteers to join 9 Health & Safety 10 Rewarding your Raggies! 10.1 Why Should You Reward Raggies? 10.2 Milestones and Rewards 10.3 On-going rewards 10.4 Presentation evenings 10.5 Valuable UKRag threads 11 Conclusion and Thanks

Introduction

Welcome to the UKRAG.net Raggie Retainment Guide. It’s written from the basis that raggies (all your fundraisers and helpers) are your most important resource, and, now you’ve got some, you should try to make sure you hold on to them! The ideas you’ll find in this guide are not exhaustive, so take what’s useful for you and your Rag at this moment in time, add your own wonderful ideas and, hey presto, you’re well on your way to building and maintaining an amazing Rag.

Hang on a minute! Rags?

Rags are student fundraising groups. They come in many different shapes and sizes; some are large, some are small, some focus on raids (street collections) and some on events, and many are somewhere in between. If you’re looking to start a Rag you should look at the Starting from scratch guide first, and then return to this guide once you’re underway.

The purpose of Rag

Rags exist to help students raise money for charities, but a large part of their purpose is to offer opportunities for the students themselves to develop through organising events, creating publicity, directing the Rag as part of a committee and much else besides. This isn’t saying that student development is more important for rags than raising money (that’s a whole other discussion) it’s simply recognising that if you don’t give your recruits the opportunity to get involved, take some responsibility and develop new skills they’re unlikely to stay around for very long, which wouldn’t be good for your fundraising total either. A successful Rag relies on its people, and looking after them should be central to every Rag.

One Size Doesn’t Fit All

As already mentioned, Rags differ a lot from one another. There will be points and suggestions made in here that seem to have no relation to your Rag whatsoever - the only way to have avoided that would have been to produce a guide so general as to be meaningless for everybody. There should, however, be plenty here that’s directly relevant, and even more that you can adapt to make fit the circumstances of your Rag. The central point to remember is that 'people are important' and, just as you need to work hard to get them; 'you’ll need to work hard to keep them energised and involved'. This guide exists to highlight topics that you’ll need to focus on so that your recruits don’t melt away over the course of the year, and to give examples of how you can address potential problems. It doesn’t provide all the answers, just helps you to find them for yourself. There’s plenty more information available at ukrag, and you’ll be sure to have plenty of great ideas yourself that we haven’t even thought of. Good luck!

What can volunteers do? Why do they do it?

As previously highlighted any rag will rely on the people it comprises. From the President down to the newly signed up fresher – without each raggie doing their part the rag and fundraising community as a whole would be lost.

Volunteers can be involved with:

• Street Collections/Raids
• Driving
• Event organisation
• Recruitment
• Finance
• Office Work
• Blagging Stuff
• Or even attend a single event on the rag calendar.

Someone is always forgotten and it is this guide’s purpose to motivate rags to stop forgetting and start rewarding!!

If we ask ourselves why people join rag it will give us a better understanding of how we can keep raggies involved and exciting about rag.

Why do people join RAG?

There are social reasons like meeting new people, travelling the country and building self confidence. Or quite simple put: partying!! Then there are the moral reasons, the reasons that give you a warm glow:

• Helping the Community
• Making a difference
• A good cause.

THE GREAT FEELING YOU GET FROM RAISING MONEY FOR CHARITY WITH FRIENDS

Since you are reading this guide, you should already have a rag and some raggies. Things might be running along pretty smoothly but the academic year is filled with ups, downs and let’s face it, exams. Whilst this guide wants to keep you rag alive and on the road to even greater success, do not let it ruin your degree!

Fun!

What do I know about fun??? (Well a lot as it happens but that is no reason to trust me).

Here is what other members of the Rag community had to say about keeping your Rag fresh:

“Don’t fall into a pattern”

“Variety truly is the spice of the life”

“Democracy RULES! Let your raggies make decisions about what they want”.

“An easy to organise social will retain people, anything from a cinema trip to a Christmas meal”.

“Pester, pester pester.”

“Do not pigeon hole people”

“Learning is addictive, keep people facing new challenges, switch it up a little”.

“What are the charities THEY want to support???”

“If jobs are not interesting for your raggies, then you are not doing enough events”.

“Run swap days within your executive committee or union.”

“ACTIONS speak louder than words”

Above all else, ask your members what they want and how you can help them?? Constantly keep evolving your Rag and keep brainstorming new ideas. Seasons change, fashions fade, time passes…do not let your Rag remain stagnant.

Democracy and Representation

Most Rags are part of a wider student body, and combine a fundraising appeal, student society and volunteer membership body. Certain rules and regulations to ensure smooth running and fair treatment of all are usually required by the host SU or college, and as with any rules – ensure these are known and made clear in advance, written down, and followed appropriately. The easiest method is to ensure everyone accepts certain standards and requirements and applies these when planning volunteer activities, fundraising and also the associated Rag stuff like socials and team building. Then you can usually ignore the necessity to have to look at detailed rules and worry too much about side-issues – so long as certain standards and ways of doing things that are fair and appropriate for all are maintained.

Lots of Rags find they are great and doing very well, but sometimes don’t always cater for certain individuals who aren’t as good as being outgoing and fitting in, or certain people from campus, courses and modes of study that aren’t actually factored into the standard Rag events that are traditionally done.

Being able to belong to a team, have a social circle and be able to be heard for the purposes of decision making are essential for any organisation to ensure that volunteers and supporters stick around. Further some of the best ideas can come from new recruits or the quieter types who aren’t necessarily part of the established group or cliques – make sure everyone has a way to be heard and be part of decision making.

Some Rags do find that Committee meetings are the worst part of their job – ie they fundraise very well, have lots of volunteers, but meetings get in the way not help with this. This is a reality that requires effective leadership and effective committee skills training for all concerned. Rag Chairs are called that as they have a job to ensure meetings are chaired effectively. It does not matter how good they are at fundraising, a good chair has to be measured on the degree to which they can chair meetings.

A good meeting is planned in advance – all members have the papers with previous minutes, details of the time/place of the current and next meeting, agenda items and all associated papers attached to read in advance. A good meeting goes through items as quickly as possible, and decisions are made – minuting who has been delegated authority to do what, by when, and who has promised to help them. Such notes should be followed up at future meetings, and either noted as complete, or the status updated.

A good Rag Chair shouldn’t need to do much more for their core job apart from chair meetings, and ensure each Committee member, volunteer and project team are doing their jobs. Doing that well is more important to the team than one person’s fundraising total, although of course you do want to leave them the chance to fundraise as well! An experienced finalist student should be able to do the job well – if they find it is taking too much time, chances are other people are not doing their jobs.

Representation can take many forms – individual volunteers and project teams may be invited and allowed to sit in on any meeting. Some Rags have open meetings every week or two, and AGMs or term meetings, but restrict formal Committee meetings to members and invitees as well.

The Rag Committee is the Trustee board of a Rag, and the members have legal responsibilities to ensure decisions are correctly made and money is correctly looked after. They are responsible to the wider student body, host institution, the volunteers who worked so hard to raise the money and to the charities that the money ultimately belongs to. As such all the above need a formally recognised way to be able to input to the Committee, and to have their opinions heard. This may be via an open forum at formal meetings, regular general meetings, or elected/appointed reps, e.g. year reps, course reps and so on. The details depend on what your Rag needs, wider society rules, and realising that while having good meetings and representation can be difficult to maintain at times, they are essential for democracy and representation – which is a way by which you can keep your hard-recruited volunteers.

Communication

Communication is one of the most important jobs for any Rag; it’s essential for attracting new recruits, for getting people to your events, for gaining support through publicising the benefits of your work and for much more besides. Most importantly for this guide, it is fundamental to keeping people involved once you’ve got them interested.

No one will ever come to your Rag meetings if they don’t know when or where they are, and the same applies to events and collections. They also won’t come if information isn’t targeted, or if there’s nothing there to grab them and make them think that they want to go. Equally important, but less often considered, is the need to communicate to address any issues that might make your new recruits (or even your old committed Raggies) leave Rag feeling disgruntled. We’ll address each of these communication issues in turn. Communicating what’s going on

Simple, isn’t it? Well it’s actually quite easy to mess up! Communication is one area in which it is never acceptable to simply continue unthinkingly as generations of Raggies have before you. The way that different means of communication are considered, and their effectiveness, can change drastically over only a couple of years. Relying on posters might have worked well in the past, but poster-blindness can strike suddenly. Students might start receiving far more e-mails, and begin to ignore their Rag ones.

There are many different ways to communicate information about events and opportunities within Rag. There’s a lot more to be said about best utilising each of these methods, but here are the basics and the stuff most relevant for keeping your volunteers committed! For a more detailed discussion see [ukrag topics and resources…]

Meetings

Many small - and medium – sized Rags have regular (generally weekly) meetings open to the entire membership. These can be a great way to make new recruits feel welcomed and included – key to ensuring they keep coming back! They can also be great ways to publicise what’s coming up and how to get involved further, helping to turn your slightly-involved Raggies into core members of your team. This means both that they will contribute more to Rag, and that they will be more likely to stick around (see … )

Nevertheless, an over-reliance on meetings can be dangerous. Remember people will quite often be drunk – not the best state in which to remember lots of important information! They might also not be hanging on to every word you say, and you certainly don’t want to spend the entire meeting droning on about every last detail for all the events and collections you have coming up. Consider meetings more as a chance to enthuse people about what you do, congratulate them on what you’ve achieved and sign them up for more.

Socials

Obviously not the place to go into fine detail about your events, but still a great communications opportunity. Start bubbling about the great new events you’ve got coming up and you’ll start to get other people excited about them too! Socials are a great way to build links between your committed volunteers, and to begin to bind your newer volunteers into the group. This group spirit is key to retaining your volunteers, and to getting them to devote ever-more of their time to Rag!

Whilst socials can create a great sense of group spirit, you should try to make sure that people who for one reason or another couldn’t make the social don’t feel excluded. Try not to have too many in-jokes, or try to include others who weren’t there. You want to make all your volunteers feel included. If they don’t, they won’t hang around for very long.

Try to figure out what you want from your meetings. There's no point in making first-time raggies sit through a long and heavy committee meeting, just as there's no point in dragging the entire committee to a meeting that just covers "What is Rag?" to freshers. No-one likes a long meeting.

Websites

If used badly these do nothing to keep your Raggies motivated and involved. A good website, however, can be a very useful tool. The main thing to remember is that your website needs to be updated regularly. A few pictures and the names of the committee five years ago, along with details of events that were ‘Coming Up’ in 2001 aren’t going to help you at all! This means that it’s best to have a website that’s designed so it’s possible for anybody to update – whatever their level of expertise. You’ll then just need to consider which parts of the website you want different members of your exec to be able to update! Alternatively you could recruit a dedicated team of copywriters. Just make sure that they’re able to enthuse, entertain, and communicate well!

You might think that websites are more about advertising your events to the general student population, or even to sponsors and the local community as a whole, than a means to communicate with your volunteers to keep them involved and interested. In that case you’d be missing out on a lot of what websites can do for you. Think of including, and regularly updating, a photo gallery with photos of events and socials. You might also want to consider having a puzzle page, or a quotes page, or something else to encourage your volunteers to waste some of their essay-writing time looking at your site, and getting more involved with the rag world. For some photos or quotes you possibly would require a password-restricted area of the site. Remember potential sponsors, members of the public, and University staff might also be looking at your website!

Websites are also a great way to publicly recognise the achievements of your volunteers. You could include a list (regularly updated) of the top collectors, maybe a regular ‘Rag volunteer of the moment’ slot to recognise people who help in other ways as well, an exec page and if appropriate a reps or a project leaders page. Remember the more people feel that they’re a highly-valued member of a team the more they’re likely to hang around!

If you don’t have a website Ukrag should be able to host one for you (more info).

E-mail

A very useful tool, but again very easy to use badly! You need to make sure that the info you provide is punchy, interesting and targeted. For all but the smallest rags, this means having targeted e-mail lists (for instance, don’t send all the info on collections or specific events to everybody – have a general list, and then more specific info for people who are more likely to be interested in it.) Have a regular day on which you send out your e-mails (whether weekly or otherwise) and plan it in advance, ensuring that you’ll have all the info you need before then. Otherwise you can easily bombard people with e-mails, so that they ignore the ones you send altogether

In order to make sure that your e-mails are restricted to the regular round-ups you send, you will need to restrict access to the e-mail list. It also helps to ensure that any old drunkard in the rag office can’t just send rubbish to everyone on your list!

Letters

Don’t dismiss this traditional means of communication. Obviously it’s not as quick as e-mail, it’s a lot more bother, it costs (especially if you have to post letters properly rather than using internal mail.) Partly because of all this, the occasional letter can be a great means of keeping your Raggies feeling valued and involved. They show you’re willing to take the time, they’re more likely to at least be glanced over, and they’re certainly more likely to be kept and referred to. Consider, for instance, sending a newsletter to members once a term, with the most important dates, info on how to get more involved, news on how you’re doing, and possibly even something like a puzzle to keep people interested. This is also a great place to publicly recognise the achievements of some of your volunteers.

Text messaging

Seems more personal than an e-mail, and can therefore be a valuable way to thank people, or to congratulate them on a collecting total, or an event that’s gone particularly well. Be warned though – can seem invasive if used regularly to large numbers of people (not to mention expensive!)

Phone Calls

Needs writing

Flyers / Leaflets / Posters

If you only communicate with your volunteers through flyers, leaflets and posters you’re doing a lot wrong! They’re passive means of communication – easy for your target to ignore. They do nothing to make your Raggies feel valued or involved. This isn’t to say that they’re useless – they’re very good at attracting newbies to their first event, or alerting or reminding people who’ve done a bit of other things they can do. As far as keeping your volunteers involved, though, they should always be a fall-back method – an addition to meetings, e-mails, the website and maybe phone calls, text messages or letters, rather than your main communication strategy.

1 to 1 meetings

This is an excellent way to extract information from people who otherwise can stay very quiet, or just to get to know your fellow raggies better. A good guide to how many people you can recruit and retain is by considering how many people you can give the time to talking to personally, nothing beats it for encouraging people to stay around.

1 to 1 meetings are also essential when things go wrong. It's always important to review why things went wrong, but there is a saying that goes "If you discipline someone in front of their friends/coworkers then you're a bad manager, if you do it in private you're a good manager". If you can't say something to someone's face, in private, then it's probably best not said at all.

Remember these different means of communication compliment each other. Try to use as many as possible to communicate the key messages that you will need to keep your volunteers happy and involved.

Most important

• Thanking people for their time and effort, and congratulating them on their achievements. (Both nullified if seem routine. Whilst it’s important not to forget to thank / congratulate people, using as many as possible of the means listed don’t just consider this to be ticking off something from your to-do list, but really stop to consider how much they contribute and how best you can communicate this to them.
• Making people feel part of ‘the team. This involves both making sure they don’t feel left out (and preferably become good friends with people through rag) and making them care about the success of the team – your Rag. Communicate what you’re working for, and how well you’re doing

Clique vs' Openness

Cliques are bad. Cliques will happen. You’ll find that everyone in the second year will have the ‘in jokes’ from the year before. And without a doubt after three or four weeks, the ‘regulars’ will have theirs. This will make it very difficult to allow someone else to join. On a retainment side of view they can be good, you get a solid group. But if there is anyone else who isn’t in on it, they’ll leave. It’s hard to avoid them,

This is taken from a website, possibly extreme when it comes to RAG, think it’s aimed at adolescent teenagers more, but read it anyway:

The upside

Cliques provide:

1. A sense of belonging to their members.
2. A source of support.
3. Protection from other cliques.
4. Boosts to members' self-esteem by making them feel wanted.

The downside

1. Cliques can become guarded and hostile to outsiders. One of the ways cliques reinforce themselves is by putting down whoever isn't in with them.
2. They can leave you devoid of individuality and prevent you mixing with people outside your group. Cliques often require some uniformity among members-in appearance, in attitude, or in behaviour-to distinguish their group from other people and from other cliques and reject anyone who is different.
3. They can make you act differently from normal in an effort to fit in.
4. They can dump you at the drop of a hat, leaving you isolated and vulnerable.

I guess the only way to avoid it, is to spot it, make sure you look out for people new to the group, or those who don’t fit in with the main crowd. Keep them happy, make sure they’re having fun!

Encourage teamwork discourage cliques.

Delegation vs. Ownership

When leading a RAG, there will come times when responsibilities need to be shared, whether that be among individuals, your main committee, or groups of other volunteers. One important skill leaders need to learn is to delegate responsibility: it’s crucial to balance following up and supporting project-heads, without being over-bearing and controlling. Refusal to trust in delegation will leave your core Raggies stressed and overworked, will drive volunteers away, and in the end, will affect your totals.

Do supervise, make sure your volunteers are given the support they need, and that necessary tasks are taken care of by their deadlines. Beware the example of one Rag who realized two weeks before their beer festival that the beer had not been ordered! But appreciate that things will not be done the way you would do them, and everyone has a learning curve.

It’s important to give the people who manage projects “ownership” of their successes. You will find that volunteers get very demotivated when they are tasked with finding a solution, which they do, but then find that someone else takes on the implementation of this solution and consequently receives the credit for it. Let people follow through on their planning, reward them for their efforts, and you will have a much more successful, happy Rag.

Pre-recruitment/truly prepared for volunteers to join

Hopefully you will have been aided by the wonder that is the UKRAG recruitment guide and you have an unbelievable number of volunteers just desperate to help. If you don’t actually have anything for them to do, they’ll soon get bored and leave. Something which I was told, and works very well is to prepare a list of jobs that need, doing, these may not be the most essential jobs in the world, but they are ones that need doing. Write them all up on a blackboard or whiteboard and hang it on the back of your office door. Then when a volunteer turns up in your office asking if he or she can do anything you can delegate them the authority (see next section) to carry out one of these. The other alternative is to have them sit in the office and get bored and more often then not frustrate you who has got a hundred and one things to do and will whinge like nothing on earth that you can’t get them done, and if you only had a little help…

Make sure your prepared to take contact details, and store them somewhere, if you can get a laptop to the recruitment fair and get people to enter details straight on to a data base then that is fantastic, if not a simple folder will do, but you’ll need to have it prepared else you’ll never be able to communicate with them at later dates.

Make sure the committee are prepared; they know who they are and what each other does. It’s no good having a fresher ask one of them advice and getting told, ‘uhh I dunno you better ask, uhh I dunno, someone else’

Health & Safety

The first priority of any volunteer group is to ensure the safety and appropriateness of all activities planned and undertaken. Most Rag rules and problems with host SU’s and so on usually come from issues of Health and Safety. The main concern for most professional bodies is that if they cannot see a paper chain that demonstrates clearly how activities are safe and appropriate, they will not want to allow them to take place – and this is perfectly reasonable.

Most Raggies go on to graduate jobs after they leave Rag, and in any work place or wider scenario, organising activities safely and demonstrating this is an activity that goes without saying. If anything, most SU’s would be delighted to help your Rag with formal Health and Safety paperwork and planning, and if you have problems with your SU, approach your campus Health and Safety Officer – their job is to help you.

Any potentially dangerous activity like Bungee Jumps require detailed planning and safety precautions. Any reputable company will do an assessment well in advance with you, and would be pleased to meet campus Health and Safety officers and ensure they have no concerns. However you are still responsible at all times, and should ensure you are happy with and understand what is happening, and why.

If you feel you are planning an activity where you are not totally in control of all safety factors, ask around for help – chances are some other rag has already done this, and if not then some charity probably will. Use UKRag to find out who these are! However while this is good for the planning process, never just copy someone elses health and Safety assessment, and disclaimers. Do your own – they are part of the planning process and serve a vital part so you go through the planning stages with safety fully at the heart of the matter. Again, do approach campus Health and Safety Officer for as much help as you want – its their job!

When attending megaraids and other activities and are taking your volunteers there, you need to ensure you are happy with the host body’s safety planning. If you are in any doubt – eg have they given you a minibus driver who looks unfit to drive – you have to react to this immediately.

Most charities have disclaimers for attendees at their events, and it is always important to have effective disclaimers for major activities such as bungee jumps and hitches. Use UKRag for help and consult SU lawyers if you need to, but get them done. A disclaimer is not protection against being sued – it demonstrates what you have done to ensure the safety of participants, and they sign to confirm they appreciate this and the risks they might take – and what they must do personally as adults to ensure their own safety.

Health and Safety should not take much time, except when doing a major new activity for the first time. If everyone is sensible and aware of keeping volunteers safe – being adult and professional – then this will make your events better, and never a waste of time.

Past a certain point students are responsible for their activities alone, and nothing you can do will prevent the odd bit of bad luck or perhaps drunken high spirits that result in accidents and incidents. Know what to do in an emergency – ensure names and contact details for all participants reside with the committee member in charge of a trip or raid. For residential activities ask for medical details in an appropriate manner as needed. In any minibus trip, ensure the driver is looked after (can sleep in peace at the raid) and that two other people are there responsible as well. One in the front to navigate and look after the driver, and one in the back to look after the volunteers, and stop anyone distracting the driver.

Common sense and being an adult are the best two ways for everyone to ensure they enjoy their volunteering safely, and aren’t doing anything to affect the safety of others. Health and Safety processes are essential for planning any activity to ensure that all a participant needs to know when doing the activity is passed onto them, and they can enjoy themselves safely with what they’ve been told and exercising their common sense and adult levels of responsibility. Where volunteers are younger – eg at a FE college, different levels of standards apply, and more detailed advice from college authorities should be sought.

Health and Safety are not things to interfere with having fun and raising money – it’s the professional and common sense standard that helps you plan better and more successful activities, and that is the way by which you keep the people who come to your events and develop them as more committed volunteers.

Rewarding your Raggies!

Why Should You Reward Raggies?

You lead a busy life (collections, events, a mini-crisis every week, Rag week looming large in your future) and it’s easy to let thanking your volunteers slip by the wayside. Without them, there would not be Rag. Hopefully, your volunteers are enjoying what they’re doing, but going the extra mile to say THANKS can make a big difference in retaining the people Rag needs to keep going, and helping them have fun in the process.

Feeling unappreciated and overworked is probably the number one reason that people get burned out from Rag. Remember this applies to everyone from your Rag president or sabbatical, down to your freshers who come on one raid. Your committee and core raggies should be sure to support each other, too.

Milestones and Rewards

One common way Rags can reward their collectors is by recognizing collection or volunteer milestones. This doesn’t have to be rocket science. Start by remembering to pull aside your volunteers and big up their achievements. Tell them how much they’ve raised, and, whenever possible, what the charity can do with that money. Let them know what a huge success their event was. Notice when people try especially hard, and notice when people break their personal best, and acknowledge it! A pint in the pub after a day’s work never goes amiss.

“Winning prizes on the first few collections I did was such a grand feeling… [but] I stayed in Rag because of the open friendly environment. The Sunday night invitation to the pub after my first collection was a brilliant idea”

Don’t forget the many people who help run a Rag in the background. Think about recognizing the people who run events, do your publicity, blag donations, teach others how to collect, marshal at raids, drive the minibus, smooth over your relationship with the SU, balance your books, plaster halls with fliers, and the dozens of other things that have to get done each week. These people deserve just as much recognition as your star raider who shook a bucket to the tune of £600 quid last weekend.

Let your other members see you thank people, too. If you send members regular emails, include congratulations: first time collectors, collectors who’ve raised their first £100, £500, £1000+, collectors who’ve broken their personal best, collectors who come to every event, etc. If you have a healthy competition going between your raggies or your colleges, consider putting up a tally sheet for how much each has collected.

Physical incentives can be a good way of backing up these thanks. Some Rags are able to get sponsored gifts, such as t-shirts or pint glasses, that they give to outstanding raggies. Others might only be able to give silly gifts (ie: gold spray-painted collecting tins), or certificates. If you have the budget, what about personalized gifts for your top volunteers? Consider collecting for a charity with an incentive program, so that your collectors and volunteers have the chance to earn prizes through the charity: Help the Aged and Barnardos both have particularly nice incentives.

“The big incentive for me to really get in to collecting in my second year was to get in to that top 10. I did that not by being a superb collector, but by turning up to all of the collections over the year. I ended up in the top 5.”

On-going rewards

How are on-going rewards different than incentive prizes? This is finding ways to incorporate fun bonuses into the events that you’re already running. The people who organize events are often the last people who get to enjoy them, and you need to take care that this doesn’t happen.

One example is the Manchester Beer Festival. This three day event requires many people to help pull beer, take tickets, sell glasses, and provide sober security. Manchester Rag habitually closes the festival early on the last day, and hosts an all-night party with all the remaining alcohol for all the volunteers. This compromise gives people an incentive to help run the event, and to stay relatively sober while doing so.

This idea can be adapted in many ways. Take your Raggies on a megaraid, and allow time for site seeing before departing on the second day. Blag free admission into a student nightclub for Raggies helping with an event: maybe for marshals at the end of a pub-crawl, or for Raggies who are collecting donations at the union night. Get a restaurant or bar to sponsor a major event, and host a VIP party afterwards or donate food before hand.

The availability of certain popular events could also be used as an incentive. Have an end-of-term raid/event somewhere particularly exciting, and only allow raggies who have participated in a minimum number of previous events to attend. Use your training funding to send your most dedicated volunteers to Rag Conference in January.

Presentation evenings

Many Rags have presentation evenings to celebrate all the work and success of the previous year. The key elements are presenting your charities with their funds, letting charity reps meet your volunteers, and saying thank you to all the Raggies who made it happen. Presentation meals can be on any scale, from casual get-together at the pub, to formal meal with the Vice Chancellor. The size of your Rag, your budget, and your blagging skills will usually determine the scope of the evening.

Annual traditions are a great thing to add to a Presentation tradition. Many Rags do a top collector trophy, which remains on display, and/or an award for significant contributions and effort. Alumni members of your Rag might well want to come to the meal, and maybe make a donation as well. Consider inviting SU officials, University officials, businesses who have made contributions, as well as students and charity reps.

“Make sure you make [a presentation meal] fun! It shouldn't be something people THINK they should go to because they have done stuff for Rag, it should be something they WANT to go to!!”

Valuable UKRag threads

On competition and making everyone feel included: http://www.ukrag.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2021

On how to get donated prizes: http://www.ukrag.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4023 http://www.ukrag.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4597

The “Gentle Art of Persuasion” Guide to blagging: http://www.ukrag.net/phpBB2/dlman.php?func=file_info&file_id=15

Notes from the 2005 Conference Seminar on blagging: http://www.ukrag.net/phpBB2/dlman.php?func=file_info&file_id=96

On presentation meals: http://www.ukrag.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4073

On Corporate sponsorship (for a meal or gifts): http://www.ukrag.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3474

On Rewards and Incentive prizes: http://www.ukrag.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=710

When all other incentives fail: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4578349.stm

Conclusion and Thanks

In conclusion, there should be no conclusion!!! This is not an end but more a beginning, a jumping off point for your Rag to get the much needed boost and injection of life it needs. Keep things fun and keep things moving and you really are half way there. I hope this guide has given you some ideas on where to go next and if not get onto UkRag and ask for help and advice there.

This Guide would have been impossible to update without the support of a wonderful band of people. I list below the key contributors and if I have forgotten anyone, apologies.

Roo, Teresa, Zippy, RAG Monkey, Smiler, Martin, Big Dave, Moody Daniel, Jasonicus, Drunk Rah, Camberwell Carrot, Ebbs, Sazcrom

And the whole online community that is UkRag, thanks guys and girls!!!!!!