Marin Designers Showcase 2010... Part 1

May was a crazy month for CVNL- not only did we celebrate the Marin Human Race at the beginning of the month, but immediately after the Race was done we took on the huge task of putting on the Marin Designers Showcase.

Before I speak on volunteering at the Showcase, let's begin with a brief synopsis...

The Marin Designers Showcase is a 3-week fundraiser benefiting the volunteer services department (that's us!). A lovely couple by the name of George and Janet Pasha donated the use of their beautiful estate dubbed 'The Rose Garden', 32 interior designers came in and transformed 29 spaces into beautiful works of art. The theme of this year's showcase was sustainability and re-use. Each designer interpreted this in their own unique way- whether it was turning part of an old San Francisco pier into a piece of furniture, or putting all the old kitchen cabinets in the garage to use as extra storage space... there was no shortage of creativity. The before-and-after shots of each room were quite remarkable, and it was a thrill to be able to see all the finished products. (More pictures to come...)

Here is a picture of the outside of the house-

This year's Showcase was slightly different from previous years. To begin with, the event had been put on hold for 2.5 years, and the volunteer group who used to run the entire event (known as the auxiliary) disbanded. We also moved the event from October to May, which became confusing for many customers who had frequented the Showcase for the past 38 years.

Because the auxiliary used to have control over the Showcase, as well as being the source of volunteers ("staffing") for the fundraiser, and because they were no longer a group, this mean that we had to pull from a whole new pool of volunteers. Normally, this would not be a daunting task; we have a large base of wonderful regular volunteers who are willing to help out when we need. However, to staff a 3-week event, we needed several hundred volunteers to fill nearly 800 shifts. 800 shifts! Now that is daunting... and not only that! Because the Showcase has a reputation for being a somewhat formal event, we needed volunteers who were:

a.) over the age of 18
b.) professional or semi-professional
c.) had strong customer service skills and could stand for long periods of time

Now this was quite the task to take on. I had to elicit the help of the rest of my team here in volunteer services and come up with some serious recruitment methods. We developed lists of service groups, churches, businesses, art schools, and anybody else we were able to speak with and convince to help us out. This process alone took up several weeks, long hours, and required regular meetings with the rest of the staff in order to stay on track.

I even drew a "house thermometer" that we used as a visual to track our progress, and I began offering prizes to people who could fill 10 or more volunteer slots in one day. It took us weeks and weeks just to meet what we considered to be a bare minimum for our volunteer base, and that was only the beginning...