Volunteer coordinator

The function that owns volunteers from recruitment through to show day: who is coming, which station they cover, which shift they work, what they were told before doors, and who they report to when something changes. The trigger that makes it a real role is not headcount, it is simultaneity. As soon as check-in, the stage, and sponsor booths are live at the same moment, volunteers can no longer organize themselves by looking around the room, and someone has to hold the whole board. Note that this course never quotes a volunteer-to-attendee ratio, because no credible published one exists. Staffing is planned as stations multiplied by shifts.

Source: Volunteer convention and film festival practice. Ticket Fairy’s guide to scaling fan conventions describes the structural shift “from an informal volunteer group to a hierarchy of departments with trained team leads” and puts a dedicated coordinator at the center of it; festival org charts place the volunteer coordinator under Operations or standing alone, depending on how volunteer-dependent the festival is. Published volunteer department breakdowns from Anime Central and the Sarasota Film Festival show the function in live use.

First used in: 1.2 · The org chart: who you actually need. Taught fully in 2.7 · The volunteer engine.