Stanford's Cantor Arts Center: 350 Volunteers Coordinated
Posted by Ally Patterson
350
Volunteers Coordinated
$250,000
Raised at a Single Event
97%
Of Volunteers Self-Managed Their Sign Up
When you're running one of the most beloved fundraising traditions on the Stanford University campus, getting the volunteer schedule right isn't optional. For Janet Tang, Volunteer Ticket Sales Chair for the Cantor Arts Center's annual Treasure Market, coordinating 350 people across a complex event calendar meant a lot of phone calls, a lot of emails, and a lot of manual effort. That changed when she brought SignUpGenius into the process.
The Organization
The Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Arts Center is Stanford University's only museum, founded alongside the university in 1891. For more than 130 years it has served as a cultural anchor on campus, housing a permanent collection that spans thousands of works across painting, sculpture, photography, and decorative arts.
Keeping a collection like that growing takes resources, and for decades the museum has turned to its volunteer community to help raise them. Treasure Market, launched in the 1950s, is the centerpiece of that effort. Each year, the event brings together individuals and collectors to browse and purchase fine furniture, china, crystal, silver, books, works of art, and more.
It's part community gathering, part high-stakes fundraiser, and it has become one of the most recognizable traditions associated with the museum. The event's success depends entirely on a large, well-organized team of volunteers showing up to the right places at the right times. With a net goal of $250,000, the margin for coordination errors is essentially zero.
The Problem
Treasure Market runs on volunteers, and for years, coordinating those volunteers was a fully manual operation. Tang was managing 350 people by phone and email, building schedules by hand, and fielding a constant stream of individual requests. As she put it simply: "Painfully."
The complexity wasn't just the headcount. Treasure Market requires a layered schedule across multiple departments, roles, and time slots, and each layer creates its own coordination surface. A single cancellation could mean tracking down a replacement, notifying a department chair, and updating a master schedule, all through separate communications.
Changes compounded. Follow-up piled up. And because everything ran through Tang personally, there was no way to distribute the load. The event could succeed on the day and still leave the person running volunteer coordination exhausted before it even started.
The Solution
Tang chose a SignUpGenius paid plan to rebuild the volunteer coordination process from the ground up. Instead of managing schedules reactively through calls and emails, she built the full event schedule inside the platform and let volunteers find and claim their own slots.
The results were immediate. Tang was able to handle a complicated multi-department schedule in one place, collect volunteer email addresses for future communication, and field far fewer one-off requests because volunteers could manage their own sign-ups directly.
Genius Tip
Collecting volunteer email addresses through your sign up gives you a built-in contact list for future events. No separate spreadsheet required.
Positive across the board, including non-tech-savvy participants
Of 350 volunteers, fewer than 10 needed any direct help from Tang, whether to change a time slot, cancel a sign-up, or troubleshoot access. That number reflects something important: the sign up was simple enough that people figured it out on their own, even those who weren't especially comfortable with technology.
For Tang, the broader impact was visible in how her department chairs responded. Because SignUpGenius gave her the flexibility to handle requests and changes quickly, she became the go-to yes-person for every scheduling question. "All the department chairs thought that I was such a techy person because everything they requested I was able to say yes, I can do it."
In Their Words
We asked Tang a few questions about her experience coordinating Treasure Market with SignUpGenius. Here's what she shared.
On the before: "Painfully. Manually by phone and email to schedule 350 people."
On usability: "I have received positive responses from everyone, even the individuals that are not tech-savvy."
On time savings: "It has saved me so much time. I just set up the schedule on the site and did not have to do much of anything."
On the features that mattered most: "I was able to easily create a complicated schedule and most importantly, I can have the volunteers' email addresses for future contact."
On what she'd tell others: "It will save so much of your time."
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Posted by Ally Patterson
