ABSTRACT
Festivals are highly dependent on volunteers. Community festivals are frequently entirely organised and run by volunteers, and major international festivals rely on large numbers of volunteers to steward events, host artists and provide a range of behind-the-scenes support. Volunteers are an important part of the not-for-profit festival business model, holding a significant role in terms of stakeholder power and influence, and involving many more volunteers than public or private-sector events. This chapter critically examines the small body of literature on festival volunteers to examine the ways in which they can be organised. It explores and details a new volunteer management model for recruiting and managing volunteer programmes across a range of festivals and events developed by the Australian company "I Need Helpers" (INH). The chapter utilizes a case-study research design to examine the development of a new model for sourcing and organising festival volunteers, the Hub for Events Looking to Procure Engage Retain and Support volunteers model.
