I am a local entrepreneur who is interested in helping community theatre as a whole. Community Theatre (code for “volunteer”) companies often have a shortage of volunteers for plays (and other events – event setup/take-down anyone? ushering?) due in no small part to the fact that other venues can pay their people. Of course everyone involved is doing it because they love theatre, yet the times/locations are usually a strain for anyone to devote as much time to is as they wish. There are also interpersonal issues that can reduce how much someone like to volunteer. I believe I may have a way of addressing it by rewarding our volunteers in a fun way. Enter Engage.
Engage’s goal is to improve volunteerism; starting with a focus on community theatre and then branching out into other fields once we have worked out the kinks. You can read about this at www.volentold.com. Engage will help address the volunteer shortage in community theatre by improving the engagement process between theatre companies and the volunteers who drive the industry using marketing and personnel-retention strategies similar in concept to those of Google.
Wouldn’t it be cool if you could rack up points for acting and ushering and setting up? what if you got new themes or trivia as a reward for being engaged? How would you like to be recognized as a leader in the community? Who wants to know what the Fat Lady Achievement is? I have come up with an App idea for engaging volunteers in the theatre community here. As a board member of Workshop Theatre I am making the commitment to help address this problem. In a week there is a board meeting where I will present my idea. At this time it is an idea, if Workshop likes it then I’ll pitch it to other theatre companies in town and go from there.