It’s more than five months before the majority of Southern Californians heed Pasadena’s call to America’s favorite New Year’s Day tradition.
But in the heat of July – long before Rose Parade float builders even place floral orders – Katie McCormick has realized the fruits of six months of scheming.
The program director for Artistic Entertainment Services, one of three float builders, has solved a big problem: How to corral thousands of individuals, families, nonprofit groups, locals who make it an annual tradition and bucket-listers who travel from afar?
All these helpers flock to the Rosemont Pavilion near the Rose Bowl for one purpose: To meticulously glue seeds, grains and blooms onto a Rose Parade float.
Volunteers spend more than 100,000 hours working just during the one week lead-up to the New Year’s Day parade, said McCormick.
That’s a lot of coordination.
This month, McCormick and her AES team launched a centralized volunteer hub — aesvolunteers.com —- a proprietary, in-house project they’ve been working on since January.
The new website schedules helpers, organizes group affiliations and tracks liability waiver forms. It also provides key resources, said McCormick, such as parking guidelines and area restaurant recommendations.
“The volunteers are the hearts of the floats, truly,” McCormick said via phone this week.
Volunteers work side-by-side with professionals to put finishing touches on the floats. Some helpers make it an annual tradition, some work alone, some with family members, some travel thousands of miles to participate in Pasadena’s 137-year-old tradition.
And without people donating their time, said David Eads, CEO Pasadena Tournament of Roses, the parade just wouldn’t be possible.
Eads, in a statement, said the Tournament doesn’t track the exact number of volunteers who work with professional builders such as AES or with organizations’ self-built floats. But, by the time the floats are ready for their closeups on New Year’s Day, “it has taken tens of thousands of volunteer hours and an incredible amount of heart.”
To register with aesvolunteers.com, you must be 18 or older. After you register and sign a waiver, you can schedule yourself, a family member or your group of volunteers for time slots that begin Nov. 7.
You must be at least 12 years old to volunteer for float work, McCormick said. And, 12- and 13-year-olds must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. Once a child turns 14, she said, the parent signs the liability waiver online and the teen is able to work onsite without parental supervision.
AES has slots for anywhere from 300 up to 1,000 volunteers, depending upon whether the need is for dry decorating (gluing on those seeds and grains) or for fresh floral decorating (titled “Deck Week.”)
Most volunteers, said McCormick, want to work during “Deck Week,” when sweet-smelling flowers and petals are attached to the floats. But, she added, every job is important, from sweeping to moving buckets.
And, if you’re assigned a “boring” job, just ask, she said and a volunteer coordinator will find you something to do that’s more exciting.
The new AES website not only streamlines the sign-up process for volunteers, but it greatly benefits the float builder, said McCormick, who added without the throngs of helpers, the price tag to produce a Rose Parade float would soar.
“It’s selfish,” McCormick said. “Because (the new site) is not all for the volunteers, but it’s good for us.”
In the past, said the program director, AES had information about all its volunteers, but it wasn’t collated in one place. When it came time for “Deck Week,” for example, AES workers would rely on volunteers to self-report on the scheduled day whether they had an artistic background or decades of petal-placing experience.
Now, when volunteers register on the site, they can add their experience to their profile.
That lets AES see where special talents might lie so they can match the abilities of volunteers with floats’ needs, said McCormick.
“Having (all the information) in one place is extremely important,” said McCormick. “I think we’re one step ahead right now.”
The improvement in volunteer coordination is especially useful when it comes to larger groups, said McCormick.
In the past, when signing up groups of 10 or more, she said, AES relied on emailing. They’d have to wait for a response. Waivers and resources information would flow back and forth via email without a central spot for safekeeping.
Now, said McCormick, the group leader is responsible and invites team members via the AES hub. And all data is kept within the volunteer hub.
The group capability, she said, even extends to float sponsors such as UPS Store which can have its own extension – and its own aesvolunteers.com website link – so that UPS employees can sign up directly to work solely on their company’s float.
The Rose Parade’s other professional builders – Phoenix Decorating and Fiesta Productions – also have opportunities for volunteers to sign up to help. As well, you can sign up to help through any of the organizations that self build floats, such as the La Canada Flintridge Tournament of Roses Association, the Torrance Rose Float Association or the Burbank Tournament of Roses Association.
For Eads, having one of the professional builders facilitate an easy sign-up process makes it more convenient and connects more people with the unique experience of decorating a float, allowing them to experience the artistry, teamwork and sense of community that make the Rose Parade so special.
“The easier it is for people to get involved, the stronger the tradition becomes,” Eads said.
Another feature of the AES volunteer hub is a real-time capacity gauge. Volunteers can see exactly how many spots are still available on the schedule.
Don’t wait until fall to sign up, McCormick cautioned, as spots could become unavailable.
The most popular spot, for example – the morning of Dec. 31 – is near capacity. That’s the day before the gloriously decorated floats roll down Colorado Boulevard.
“It is the number one day that fills up so fast,” McCormick said. “It baffles me. I understand people want to see the finished float, but we don’t do much work on that day, other than sweeping up and bucket moving.”
For more information or to sign up to volunteer with AES, visit aesvolunteers.com.
Lisa Jacobs is a correspondent with the Southern California News Group.