Evelyn C. Mcdonald
Arts & Culture Reporter
May 26, 2016 4:53 p.m.
I volunteered at the Wild Amelia Expo last Saturday, greeting people entering the Atlantic Recreation Center and answering questions. It was a three hour stint made easy by sitting next to a friend of mine who had also volunteered. It made me think about how important volunteers are.
Volunteers are the lifeblood of arts and culture organizations in our community. They are certainly more important to such organizations than any other group except the audience. They give their time and energy, without which nothing would happen. Volunteers are more important than arts and culture boards (and I have served on several). The boards set directions and develop plans but without volunteers, nothing happens. Indeed some boards have realized this and take great pains to appreciate and thank their volunteers.
The unsung hero of the volunteers is the volunteer coordinator. This person has to be a combination of sympathetic listener and drill sergeant. He or she maintains lists of people who want to volunteer, assigns roles to volunteers, and manages the actual activity where the volunteers work. A good coordinator knows how to place volunteers where they will be most effective and comfortable. Even with calculators, you don’t ask someone with no head for numbers to be a cashier.
Easy, you say. Let me give you an example that I know personally. At the Friends of the Library semi-annual book sales, volunteers sort books, keep the tables full, answer questions, and offer help to anyone looking confused or over-burdened with books. Volunteers act as cashiers and, for members’ night, provide refreshments and check memberships. During the year, they sort books at the Peck Center, keeping track of those that haven’t sold for several book sales and sorting by category. When one sale ends, they begin the task of preparing for the next one.
An exception? Hardly. At the Wild Amelia Expo, volunteers were running programs for children, moving sound speakers, giving directions, and greeting people. Name an important activity put on by local arts and culture organizations and I can guarantee it wouldn’t be possible without volunteers. The reason they can be overlooked is that they are busy making people comfortable and making everything run smoothly.
To paraphrase an old saying, “Boards are where the rubber meets the sky. Volunteers are where the rubber meets the road.” Next time you go to an event, take note of the people who are helping it run smoothly. You might even smile at one and say thank you when he or she directs you to a seat or answers your questions. Without their efforts, we would be a much poorer community.
Evelyn McDonald moved to Fernandina Beach from the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. in 2006. She is a chair of Arts & Culture Nassau, a city commission charged with support of the arts in Nassau County. She serves on FSCJ’s Curriculum Committee for the Center for Lifelong Learning. She is also the chair of the Dean’s Council for the Carpenter Library at the UNF. Ms. McDonald has MS in Technology Management from the University of Maryland’s University College and a BA in Spanish from the University of Michigan.