Volunteering 101: Running the Membership Table
The concourse table is the front door of a supporter organisation. Almost everyone who joins a booster club has stood in front of one first, usually while holding a drink and half-watching a period. This is a practical guide to working that shift, written for people doing it for the first time.
Before you arrive
Confirm three things with whoever is coordinating: what time you can get into the building, where the table is, and who has the bins. Doors for volunteers are usually earlier than public doors, and the walk from the car park with two full bins is longer than it looks.
Bring a float in small bills. If your organisation takes cash for anything — raffle tickets in particular — the difference between a smooth night and a frustrating one is whether you can break a twenty at 6:40pm. Bring a pen that works and a spare, because the pen will vanish.
Setting up
A good table has one focal point and very little else. A display board or a basket that people can see from twenty feet away, a short stack of forms, and a clear price. Clutter kills a table: if there are nine things on it, visitors will read none of them and keep walking.
Stand in front of the table rather than behind it if the concourse allows. It sounds like a small thing and it roughly doubles the number of conversations you will have. A table with someone behind it is a booth. A person standing beside a display is a person.
The six questions
You will be asked these more times than you expect. Have a one-sentence answer ready for each, and resist the urge to expand.
- What is this? — The supporter club for the men's hockey program. Members get the newsletter, socials, and events with the team.
- What does it cost? — Give the number, then stop talking. Let them decide.
- What do I actually get? — Be honest and concrete: the newsletter, invitations to events, and the trips. Do not oversell.
- When is the next event? — Know the next one. Just one. If you are not sure, say so and take an email address.
- Are you affiliated with the university? — We are an independent non-profit that supports the program. The distinction matters and people appreciate the clarity.
- Where are the restrooms? — Learn the building. You are the closest thing to an information desk in that stretch of concourse, and answering it cheerfully converts more members than any pitch.
The rhythm of a shift
Traffic comes in three waves: the pre-game hour, which is the busiest and most productive; the two intermissions, which are frantic and mostly about raffle sales; and the trickle during play, which is when you should be tidying and counting rather than standing at attention.
Do not try to talk to people during the last three minutes of a period. Nobody is listening. Use the time to reconcile cash, restock forms, and drink some water.
Handling money and forms
Two rules, both learned the hard way by every organisation that has ever run a table. Keep cash in one place, and count it with a second volunteer present at handover. Never leave the table unattended, even for two minutes — ask a neighbour to watch it or close the box and take it with you.
Write legibly on membership forms, and read back the email address to the person who gave it to you. A membership list is only as good as its worst handwriting, and a mistyped address means somebody paid to join and never heard from you again.
The handover
Whoever takes the table after you needs three things in thirty seconds: the state of the cash box, what has sold and what is left, and anything unusual that happened. Anything the coordinator needs to know — a member who asked a question you could not answer, a supply that ran out — goes in a note, not in your memory. It will not survive the drive home.
Why the job is worth doing
People underestimate this shift because it is unglamorous, and it is the single highest-leverage volunteer job in a small organisation. Everything else — the newsletter, the golf outing, the bus trips — depends on a membership list, and the list grows almost entirely at that table, one conversation at a time.
It is also, quietly, the most enjoyable job on the roster. You will meet more people in two hours than in a season of sitting in your own seat: alumni from the club era, parents of youth players, students working out whether hockey is their sport, visiting fans who want to know where to eat afterwards. A concourse is a cross-section of a community, and the table is the best seat in it.