Managing volunteers at a major international event brings with it unique challenges. High stakes, high volume and very little time for admin. This characterises the FISU World University Games perfectly. The team saw over 3000 people apply over a period of just a few months and then over 2000 active volunteers throughout the 10 days of the event.

We spoke with Gianluca who was the Deputy Head of Volunteer Management for the event. He was looking for a platform where his team could:

- Easily store and manage volunteer data

- Assign to functional areas

- Schedule volunteers across thousands of individual shifts

- Manage communication with volunteers before and during the event

The team don't have time to spend lots of time training volunteers on using a system so it was very important that the system was user friendly and mobile first for volunteers.

The team found the setup very simple and Gianluca commented that they could get up and running very quickly which was very important. This was aided by what Gianluca stated was "Incredible support" at the start and throughout the event.

Commenting on Volunteero, Gianluca was very pleased that Volunteero offers a simple way for volunteers to communicate with the team. The volunteers were able to book their own shifts which was a big time saver vs having to assign them themselves. Volunteers would see just the shifts for the functional areas they had been assigned to which was a big plus.

He was able to oversee the progress of the shift booking and address any gaps. The team could then either access the shifts digitally or export it to excel so team leaders in each area knew who to expect.

When asked how it went, Gianluca said the event was hugely successful and he said "the volunteers first of all were happy and this is the most important thing"

Check out the short video interview below. Volunteero works with major global events like FISU and the Special Olympics, if you would like to learn how we can help you manage the volunteers for your event, get in touch!