Volunteer Appreciation BBQ 2012

Overview

What: A BBQ to celebrate Free Geek volunteers, staff and board members
When: Saturday, July 21, 2012 from 3-7 PM
Where: Free Geek/Market Studios parking lot
Attendance: ~175-200 (including staff)

Planning

• Planning committee included Stephen, Amelia, Walter, Misty, Kelly, Robert, Kevin, Sarah, and Larry (Board member)
• We used the events@ list and a google doc spreadsheet to communicate
• We met roughly weekly started about 2 months before the event
• Much of our planning information is contained in several sheets in this spreadsheet: Media: Planning_for_Summer_Barbeque_2012.gnumeric
• To schedule staff help the day of, we had people sign themselves up on this google doc (and then filled in what we needed to: Media: 2012_BBQ_Schedule_Sign-Up.gnumeric‎

Food/Drink

Drinks

We had lots of beer:

• 15 cases of assorted Ninkasi (donated by Ninkasi)
• 1 keg of Widerm Bro's IPA (donated by Widmer)
• 2 cases of Omission (gluten-free) (donated by Widmer)
• 1 keg of Rogue dark IPA (purchased for reduced price)

We easily went through both kegs but have ~10 cases of Ninkasi left. [Start soliciting beer donations ~2 months in advance.]

For non-alcoholic choices, we had two large beverage coolers--one for ice water and one for lemonade. This seemed to be fine.

Food

Facilities

• Porta potties (2, including one wheelchair accessible) from American Sani-Can
• Set up three large tents (having a large tent over the food tables was key) and one small pop-up canopy (for the beverages)

[We have the parts for three large tents, but they take some time and ~4 people to set up. Should do a parts check before the day of to make sure it's all there.]

• Pulled out tables and chairs from all over FG (probably had ~15 large tables)

[Make sure to label where tables came from with masking tape so that they go back to where they came from.]

• Sound system was provided by Austin's DJ friend (large powered speakers, a mixer, and a mic)
• Santi brought his grill from home for the meat, and we used a FG smaller grill for the veggie stuff
• 2 plastic tubs of miscellaneous supplies are living in the bike storage area labeled "BBQ stuff"

Games/Activities

DJ

Raffle

Everyone who came before 4 or 4:30 got 3 raffle tickets to go toward winning the following prizes:

• A super high-end system with peripheral devices including subwoofer speakers, keyboard, mouse, and high-end LCD monitor
• A laptop
• A/V stuff (a reverb amp and 3 DVD players)
• Gift cards/items from other businesses (see spreadsheet for details)

The raffle is a hit every year. Start soliciting businesses for donations well in advance--at least 1-2 months. We had a poster thanking sponsors that featured their logos; telling businesses that we do this will make them more likely to donate.

It was also very helpful to have a template in-kind donation request letter that could be customized and submitted to different local businesses. Next year's template should be finalized at least 2 months in advance so donations can be solicited more efficiently. Versions of the letter that promised to publicly acknowledge our sponsors and listed the various media in which we would be acknowledging them (website, newsletter, social media, verbal acknowledgement at the event) tended to be more successful in picking up donations than letters that did not include this information.

Here are the Raffle tickets we used. It contains 100 tickets, but if you change the numbers in the top row (ie from 1000 to 1100 and from 1001 to 1101) you can generate the next 100 tickets. We printed and cut out 600 on cardstock paper and this was more than enough. Might want to compare the cost of staff time, paper and printing for this method with the cost of rolls of ready-made perforated raffle tickets, which might be cheaper overall. (We used ready-made tickets as beer vouchers - could easily get tickets of a different color for the raffle.)

Chess

There is a cardboard box which lives on the shelf above the staircase in the main upstairs office, labeled "Blaine's chess sets" which contains 3 chessboard mats and compatible pieces for all three boards. These should be used for chess games, which also tend to be a popular activity. Blaine (long-time Build Instructor) likes to play multiple games simultaneously against multiple competitors; this activity brings in lots of participation.

Cornhole

Photo Op Face-Hole Board

Misty brought a carnival face-hole board that a friend of hers had painted, and volunteers used it for photo opportunities. This was a last-minute activities addition that folks seemed to really enjoy. Next year we may want to consider painting a board with some sort of geeky/tech theme and have a staff member assigned to take photos of volunteers that can be printed out and they can take a copy home with them.

Publicity

We put up "Save the Date" flyers ~1 month in advance and big (11"x17") flyers a couple weeks in advance.

Here is the main flyer in English: Media:BBQflyer5.svg and Spanish: Media:BBQflyer5.Espanol.svg. Open it in Inkscape (and you will need to download the font Coffeetin).

Here is the Save the Date in English: Media:BBQSaveTheDate.svg and Spanish: Media:BBQSaveTheDate.Espanol.svg‎. These are also Inkscape files.

We also sent out emails to Regulars@, Social@, and BoardAnnounce@ a few times leading up to the event.