Volunteers

Open the page

From your event's director dashboard, click Volunteers in the sidebar. The page has a Volunteer settings card (signup window and the one-role-or-many policy), your list of volunteer groups, and a year selector — after you renew an event, past years' rosters stay viewable but read-only.

Creating volunteer groups

A group is one role people can sign up for. Each group has:

Name

The role, e.g. Course Marshals or Packet Pickup.

Description

What volunteers do, what to bring, where to report.

Priority

Low / Medium / High. Shown on the public signup form so people know where help is most needed.

Min needed

A visual “we need at least this many” signal. It never blocks anything.

Capacity

The hard maximum. 0 means unlimited; once a group is full, further signups are rejected and the group shows as Full.

Shift starts / ends

Optional times, shown in the event's time zone so volunteers know the commitment.

Signup code

Optional. When set, nobody can join the group without typing the code — useful for roles you're filling by invitation. The code is only visible to directors.

In Volunteer settings you can also set a signup window (an opens-at and closes-at time). Outside the window, the public form shows “signup hasn't opened yet” or “signup has closed” instead of the form. Leave both blank to keep signup open whenever the event is published.

The public signup page

Volunteers sign up at runthis.run/event/<your-event>/volunteer. It's a short wizard:

1. Basics

   Their info (name, date of birth, gender, phone — prefilled from their Run This profile) plus the group or groups they want. Groups that need a code ask for it right there, and the code is checked immediately so a typo doesn't surface at the very end.

2. Giveaways (only when relevant)

   If a selected group has volunteer giveaways, they pick theirs — sizes included. See Giveaways & merch for how to offer giveaways to volunteers.

3. Agreements

   The Run This liability waiver, plus any required waivers you've added — each with a scroll-through and a typed signature. See Waivers.

4. Payment (only when a giveaway costs money)

   A priced giveaway goes through secure checkout, with the processing fee added on top — the same model as registration. Free signups skip this step entirely.

5. Complete

   A thank-you screen with a confirmation number and share options.

What happens when someone signs up

• The volunteer gets a confirmation email.
• Every director of the event gets a push notification — “so-and-so signed up to volunteer,” naming the role. It's on by default; each director can turn it off per event in the notification settings, and you never get pushed for your own signup on your own event.
• The group's signup count updates everywhere, and any paid-giveaway payment appears in your Finance Insights payments table.

One role per person, or several

By default a volunteer can hold one role per event — most single-day races only need one shift per person. In Volunteer settings, turn on “Allow volunteers to sign up for more than one group” for multi-day events or long races where someone might cover two shifts.

Someone who's already signed up and returns to the form sees their current signup with a cancel option — and a “sign up for another role” path only when the multi-role setting is on.

Managing the roster

Each group has a Roster button that opens the signup list. From there you can:

• Edit a signup — fix a typo in a name or phone number, or change their giveaway selection.
• Move a volunteer to a different group (the target group's capacity is respected).
• Remove a volunteer entirely. Any giveaway inventory they held is released back to the pool.
• Set a captain — a badge on one member of the group. The captain must already be signed up for that group.

A group that still has signups can't be deleted — cancel or move its volunteers first, so nobody's signup silently disappears.

Volunteers on race day

Two different codes are worth keeping straight. The group signup code above controls who can join a volunteer group. Separately, the volunteer check-in code on your Check in page lets your crew run athlete check-in at runthis.run/check-in without a Run This account — see Race-day check-in.