You’re interested in volunteering? Thank you so much! MañanaCon is powered by dozens of helpful gamers who make the event truly special.
If you know all about our volunteering opportunities, go to our volunteer form to sign up! But if you’re looking for specific details on how our volunteers contribute, read on.
I’m new to volunteering. What should I sign up for?
Most people start out as Meeple Volunteers, named because they take on “point me where to go and tell me what to do” tasks, a la a meeple in a worker placement game. These tasks are designed to be easy for new volunteers and will help you understand how the convention works. Meeples spend at least 4 hours on convention tasks.
We put out a call for Meeple Volunteers via our newsletter and Discord about a month before the convention. That call includes a lot of important tasks like:
- Creating and packing name tags for our attendees
- Packing swag bags for our VIPs
- Prepping games for the giveaway, raffle, library, and auction
- Loading and unloading boxes to go to and from the convention venue
- Unpacking and packing boxes at the beginning and end of the convention
If you are looking to take on more ownership of pre-convention planning and organizing, you may want to consider becoming a Core Volunteer. Core volunteer responsibilities usually take 12+ hours and include tasks such as
- Recruiting sponsors from publishers, local businesses, and individuals
- Publicizing the convention on social media and at local events
- Organizing the venue and creating floor plans
- Coordinating major events at the convention including our Auction, Designer Mesa, Night Market, and Tournament
- And much, much more
If you have a specific area of focus or a specialization you think will be uniquely relevant to the convention, please reach out via our volunteer form.
Can I run a game for the convention?
Yes, absolutely! Our GMs are pulled from our attendees and are tracked separately from our volunteers. Look for a call to go out a few months before the convention for those who want to run games to go on the official schedule.
Do I get anything for being a volunteer?
Yes! For Meeples & Core Volunteers, we have volunteer-exclusive thank you gifts as well as a thank you party. As a general rule, we do not offer discounts or comps for volunteers.
More importantly, we hope that volunteering gives you the satisfaction of knowing you contributed to making the gaming community in New Mexico just a little bit better. We couldn’t do it without you.
Our promise to volunteers
Mañanacon will treat volunteers with respect and thankfulness befitting their commitment to the convention.
Our volunteers are usually our core committed convention attendees, and we want the experience to be rewarding and sustainable.
Community-driven organizations can become overly dependent on volunteer work, and then be caught off-guard when critical volunteers burn out or leave the convention for personal reasons. This is very disruptive when it happens and we don’t want that to happen for MañanaCon.
With that core philosophy in mind, these are our principles for volunteer labor.
Principle 1: We commit to providing sustainable volunteer opportunities.
Volunteering should not lead to burnout for the individual. If the tasks are overly time-consuming or difficult, the convention will work with the individual to reduce the scope of the volunteering.
If you’re a volunteer and you feel yourself getting burned out, please come to Paul and Tara! We’ll find a way to allow you to scale your commitment back to a healthy level. We would rather have you as a happy attendee than an unhappy volunteer.
Principle 2: All work done by volunteers will be “nice-to-have,” not critical to the convention’s success.
Volunteers are not employees, and work that is crucial for the convention’s success should be done by paid convention staff. Critical work includes accounting, managing key vendor relationships, strategic planning, and more. Non-critical work includes one-time activities like running games, helping at the front desk, creating name tags, and more.
Principle 3: Volunteer work will be a way to contribute to the convention, not a shortcut to free or reduced admission or other perks.
Our volunteers are interested in supporting and growing this community and donate their time and resources to help it grow.
Volunteers will get thank you gifts. In very rare cases for volunteers involved with sponsor recruiting, we will offer comps or discounts. However, the monetary value of this will always be significantly lower than the value of the volunteer’s time, even at minimum wage.
We would love to be able to offer more, but the financial reality of the convention is that we can’t offer significant compensation for volunteer work. This is why we’re so committed to keeping our volunteer work sustainable (See principle #1).
In the long term, we hope to convert more of our volunteer work into compensated work done by convention staff. As that happens, individual volunteers will be given the opportunity to convert to paid employees/contractors. We value people’s time and we believe this to be a fairer and more sustainable arrangement as the convention grows.
All that said, we are open to ideas! If you have a big idea that you believe is an exceptional amount of work but would be worth the effort for the convention, please reach out on our volunteer form! We would love to see if we can mobilize other volunteers or find another way to make it sustainable for you.
I love MañanaCon! Where do I sign up to volunteer?
Please fill out our volunteer form here to sign up!