How to Ghost your Christmas Volunteers
Christmas is magical.
Lights. Music. Nostalgia. Cinnamon everywhere.
And also… your single biggest volunteer recruitment moment of the entire year.
️Which means this is the perfect season to talk about how to absolutely, completely, spectacularly fumble the ball with your one-time Christmas volunteers.
So let’s begin.
If your goal is to make sure they never come back…
⛔️ 1. Don’t prepare for them.
Think Elf on a Shelf energy.
They show up… and no one knows what to do with them.
✅ No name tag.
✅ No instructions.
✅ No “here’s where to stand.”
Just gently place them somewhere in the building and hope for the best.
(Confusion is festive.)
️ ⛔️ 2. Don’t get to know them.
Names? Personal connection? Eye contact?
Hard pass.
✅ Keep it strictly transactional.
If they start to feel seen or known, they may accidentally imagine what it’d be like to belong.
And that would ruin everything.
️ ⛔️ 3. Don’t thank them.
A vague “Thanks for helping today!” shouted across the lobby is plenty.
Definitely don’t plan anything thoughtful.
Definitely don’t give a small gift.
Definitely don’t value their time enough to say, “Hey, it's absolutely amazing that you sacrificed holiday time for this — wow, you're amazing.”
✅ Nothing says “seasonal labor” like silence.️
⛔️ 4. Don’t do a pre-service huddle.
Pre-Huddles are dangerous.
They build clarity.
They create shared meaning.
They show volunteers what it feels like to be part of the team.
If they ever experience that warmth, that vision, that sense of “Oh… this is actually kind of special,”
you’ve lost them.
(And by lost, I mean… they’ll come back. Gross.)
️ ⛔️ 5. Don’t tell them what they did well.
Affirmation is a slippery slope.
“You were great with guests today.”
“You handled that chaos like a pro.”
“You really went above and beyond with so-and-so.”
Suddenly they’re walking to their car thinking,
“Wow… maybe I’m actually good at this.”
Unacceptable.
️ ⛔️ 6. Don’t ask for feedback.
Feedback implies care.
Care implies investment.
Investment implies relationship.
And relationships turn into mutual commitment.
So whatever you do… don’t ask how the experience was for them. We wouldn't want imagining their words held weight.
️ ⛔️ 7. And above all else… don’t ask them to serve again.
If they think you only needed them for Christmas…
they’ll only give you Christmas.
But if you say,
“Hey, we’d love to have you back — not because we desperately need the help, but because you were really great at this..."
they might start to wonder if this wasn’t a one-time thing after all.
That's dangerous territory.
The not-so-subtle point...
Christmas volunteers are not filler.
They’re not warm bodies.
They’re not seasonal décor that's gone by January.
They’re people who already said yes.
That means they are ONE well-designed experience away from becoming part of your team long-term.
So don’t treat Christmas like a pop-up shop.
Treat it like a first date.
Don't let them be the one(s) that got away.
If you want to take this deeper…
Here are a few questions to help you think through what this would look like in your culture:
Where in our Christmas volunteer experience are we unintentionally creating confusion instead of clarity?
In what ways do our Christmas volunteers feel seen and known—and where might they feel purely transactional?
What moments during Christmas could help volunteers experience belonging rather than just helping?
If a first-time Christmas volunteer decided whether to return based solely on how they were treated, what decision would they make?
