Tut Tut

Saturday, September 4, 1982
The Concert Hall

"If you had two hours of volunteer credit you got a free admission. It wasn’t much money but it was something. I volunteered mostly doing coat check. And I did it for one reason--in the winter and early spring, people had to check their coats so you got to see everybody coming in. They were pretty cute!"

- Alan Miller, GCDC Volunteer

GCDC Volunteer Coordinators managed the legions of volunteers that signed up for each dance. Meeting minutes from July, 1981 note that: "with dances this large, more coordinators are needed to oversee various areas, especially to handle the cash flow and to coordinate volunteers." At the beginning of 1982, as dances were growing in popularity, GCDC dances had five volunteer coordinators: door, bar, bar ticket sales, food, and coat check. By the end of 1982, the number of coordinators had more than doubled, to a total of eleven: door, door assistant, bar tickets, security, bar (upstairs), bar (downstairs), refreshments, food, coat check, decorations, and office. Each coordinator would have between 2 and 12 members on their team.

In 1981, Pat Barber, a GCDC volunteer representing the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) suggested that volunteer labour should be given a larger percentage of dance profits than marked tickets, due to the amount of commitment and work required. Beginning in 1982, GCDC organisers decided that participating groups would get a greater share of profits from volunteer labour credits (60%) than from ticket sales (40%). This was an effort to make volunteering more desirable to participating groups.

"The whole thing was around community. There were a lot of participating organisations involved. A lot of these organisations had no connection between them. There were a lot of people that were meeting each other by working at events and realizing that they were part of this thing called the gay community. They would help each other too. When an organisation came to us and said we have this huge problem, we need the money desperately for whatever reason, people from another organisation would say, 'okay, next dance I’ll give you all my credits for working'. By participating in something that’s bigger than you and getting all these people working with you along a common goal, it really makes you feel good that you’re helping the community and that there’s a value to this. It wasn’t like a job where you just left, 'I did my shift and I’m done,' no. You had a feeling that you participated in something that’s way bigger than you. You helped the community and it was successful."

- Rob Stout, GCDC Organiser