I can feel your frustration and disappointment from here, and I totally understand. The sad truth is that some people just seem to have a complete lack of motivation or respect for other people’s efforts. You couldn’t motivate some folks if you took a red hot poker to them. If they can’t be motivated to show up to a free promotion for their business, that’s really bad business sense and their loss is their own.
In this case you may have lost a lot of time and effort, but you have also gained a big insight into their business mentality. Avoid these people in the future if you can, they’ll sap valuable time and energy which could have been well-spent on your business. If they’re showing this kind of mentality they probably aren’t too motivated to keep their customers happy as well. If they’re competitors, use these insights well.

It’s a big problem that some people think that voluntary = no obligations. My BF organises LARP events of 25-30 people. To keep the costs low the players only have to pay for catering, location rent and occasionally costumes/props. The rest is done by volunteers and it’s considered good manners for the players to show up early and help out the organisation. Sadly, last spring nobody showed up to help the organisation to build up the game area. They had only 2 people to move all props, costumes etc. across the city from our storage to the location, AND they had to furnish the entire game area by themselves. My BF was devastated and totally drained before the event even started.
This autumn they advertised: “If by Oct. 25 we don’t have at least 5 volunteers for the build-up and clean-up, the event will have to be cancelled.” They had over 7 people helping out on both the first and the last day.

This shows that it helps to remind people of the fact that they’ll lose something if they don’t contribute a bit. A financial stimulus often helps: if you ever want to organise such an event again, ask for a small fee for the promotion. This will discourage slackers and motivate people to do their part so they don’t waste their fee.

Posted By kirstyol on 11/18/2017 12:21 PM

I’ve been in a pipe band for 20 odd years and its exactly the same, members get everything free – pipes and drums to use, reeds and sticks to keep these things working, uniform, totally free tuition but ask them to help at a fundraising event and suddenly they all disappear!

That doesn’t surprise me. As the saying goes: “You can’t disappoint a cynic.”.  I’ve been a part of many volunteering organisations and you’ll always see that there are many who think that volunteering means you have no obligations. The annoying part of these group dynamics is that people all think that someone else will surely step up to do something: the bystander effect.

It helps if people are approached personally and thanked personally. When I worked for the Red Cross we went fundraising door-to-door, asking for donations of small change. The people who volunteered were people who already went to our events frequently, and they’d ask their family and friends if they wanted to go door-to-door. After all the money was counted a card was sent to each volunteer thanking them for their efforts. It also mentioned how much they had raised and where the money would be spent on. Keeping it personal meant that people were motivated. (In our case it would be spent within our city, this was always a great way of getting people to donate. Everyone likes it if it’s used to improve matters close to home.)

The system changed when they wanted to professionalise things. They hired a callcentre which approached the general population, people who said that they were interested were put on a list. Experienced volunteers were asked to manage the donations in their neighbourhood, I was one of them. Each of these got a list of potentially interested people, and had to call them to ask if they wanted to go fundraising for us. They could pick up the donation box and the instructions at the volunteer’s house, and would go fundraising in their own part of the neighbourhood.
I’ve done it for 10 years, both the old and the new way, and I wasn’t surprised to find out that many people had said yes just to get rid of the telemarketeer. Many didn’t understand what it was all about in the first place, and others barely spoke Dutch and no idea what they agreed with. I had to stop for health reasons and I can’t say that I’m sorry about it. Often it’s really better to rely on a small batch of enthousiastic volunteers than a half-a**ed attempt to get as many people as you can.

I work with volunteers. I always have to plan ahead and take flakiness into account. Why? Because people are flaky! LOL So I always have extra people lined up and the ability to move people from one position to another last minute if necessary. I know that’s different than what you’re dealing with, but I thought it might help for next time.

For things like vendors having “booths” at events, we have always charged a small fee. It is voluntary, of course, and the vendor gets “free advertising”. But the fee helps ensure people show up as promised. I don’t know how that works for online events. Perhaps it should be through another platform that allows you to charge money? I don’t know.