How to coordinate 2,700 volunteers with relative ease

by Stephanie Morgan, Columbus Wired Columnist (May 31, 2003)
Meeting Paula Haines, one would assume that she’s simply hanging out for an afternoon with a few friends. Her calm demeanor and quick smile don’t offer the slightest hint that she’s the 2003 Chairman of the Women’s Division of the Memorial Tournament Committee charged with the responsibility of coordinating over 2700 volunteers during Memorial Tournament Week.

The volunteers overseen by the Women’s Division serve areas that ultimately benefit Children’s Hospital. Volunteer applications are sent out in January and are processed on a first-come, first-serve basis. And while a 4-hour shift will grant you a daily pass and 12-hours of volunteering will garner a full-tournament pass, Paula feels that very few of the volunteers volunteer for passes. “I don’t think people do it for that reason. We get a few people who do it, who are trying to get a badge for the tournament, but most people do it because they love to volunteer, because they have a connection to Children’s and it’s a lot of fun.”

Proceeds from the various concession stands and other fundraising efforts this week will exceed $400,000 in donations for Children’s Hospital.

Just where do 2700 volunteers go, exactly? A few of the highlights are listed below:

Well, the week before the tournament, volunteers can work the Pledge for Birdies for Children’s. Individuals make pledges and they can pledge how many birdies they think will be shot during the week of tournament and there’s a big prize at the end. That raised about $70,000 last year for the Center for Child and Family Advocacy at Children’s Hospital.

Cub Care volunteers assist the PGA in a nursery-type childcare program for the player’s children

Courtesy Credential volunteers pass out credentials for everyone from the media to other volunteers to tournament officials (personally, I was very pleased with my credential-acquisition experience).

Over 900 volunteers work concession stands, with proceeds benefiting Children’s Hospital.

If you’d like to spend time inside, the Duplicating Volunteers take care of scoring and photocopying daily materials (interviewing transcripts, scoring summaries, etc.) for media representatives.

Leader Board Volunteers mark the scores of approaching golfers at every hole and also take care of the Leader Board inside the Media Center.

This year, the Scoring and Data Control position was added – a position that requires over 200 volunteers to work with the new ShotLink technology that records data on every shot taken during The Memorial.

The Sandwich Factory. Here, groups of volunteers get together before and after tournament days to make the sandwiches for concession stands.

When I asked which area was the most popular, Paula asked me to guess. Intrepid reporter I am not, as I’d assumed the Leader Board had to be the most popular – after all, I see those folks working every day in the media center.

Scroll back up and check out the list…

Guessed yet?

Think you know which area is the most popular?

Seriously, did you really scroll up, read about the various positions and guess?

Drum roll, please…

Did you guess the Sandwich Factory?

And when Paula explains “popular,” she means it:

“There’s a lottery system to get into sandwich factory. The reason is because you can do it in groups – large groups of people can do it…You can do it before tournament, early in the morning and then go watch golf that afternoon, or you can do it late at night and have a badge to watch golf the next day. I really think it’s the group thing because we get a lot of requests for people wanting to work together.”

One can imagine the special challenges in coordinating this many volunteers. “The biggest challenge is last-minute cancellations and no-shows. No-shows are obviously the worst. That doesn’t happen as often, but the week before tournament, getting all the phone calls and cancellations,” Paula explains.

And yet, there’s still time for the personal touches in volunteering: “You also have a lot of volunteers who have volunteered for a while and they have special requests. They’ve found that this is an excellent hole to work on for the Leader Board and they request that one every year [we’re] trying to accommodate those [while] giving others to experience that hole as well.”

Volunteering at The Memorial can be a family event. Twelve to Fifteen-year-olds are able to serve as runners at the Tournament.

Anyone interested in volunteering at The Memorial next year can submit a request for a volunteer application to memorial@thememorialtournament.com.