Need an idea for your next Volunteer Appreciation celebration? One of our most fun volunteer parties at our church was called “Volunteers are Super!” This was a (relatively) easy and low cost party to pull off, and turned out to be very fun! Volunteers are the superheroes that truly make the world go ’round. And when you really think about it, most of the superheroes you grew up idolizing were VOLUNTEERS. So, it works!
We decorated with solid bright tablecloths and the food tables had comic-book-themed tablecloths. Each table had an assortment of superhero stuff: water bottles with superhero duct tape over the labels, silicone bracelets in bright colors that said “BAM!” and “POW!”, plain white masks with items to decorate (read more about the masks here), and cute “Volunteers Are Super” candybar favors.
Because it’s volunteer appreciation, the staff prepared and served all the food to the volunteers. Many of the staff and volunteers got into the dress-up fun. Some costumes were as simple as a super-hero themed t-shirt; others went for more elaborate superhero costumes.
Entertainment consisted of three main activities: a video shout-out from our Senior Pastor and Executive Pastor dressed up as Batman and Robin, a selfie photo booth with a night cityscape (read how we made that here), and an interactive trivia game, hosted live by Batman himself (our Creative Arts Pastor), where we gave out adorable PowerAde “trophies” to the participants (read about the I Need A Hero game here).
We got REALLY lucky, because the stage setup already in place for the current sermon series at the time worked very well for our theme. The backdrop is black curtains and the cross is part of our sanctuary. The steel-looking structures are made from aluminum stage truss pieces with sheets of metal roofing (available at any home improvement store) hung by chain links. There are Edison lights hanging from the ceiling and colorful LEDs made it come alive. The projection image is a superhero motion background from WorshipHouseMedia.
Of course we started with a great superhero-themed invitation, designed by one of our volunteers, Kelye Tucker. We saved money by emailing the invitation and distributing paper copies at church. You can click on the image to enlarge it:
I put together the widget below so you can easily find party supplies on Amazon.
Superhero Volunteer Party Playlist
The criteria for our church superhero-themed volunteer appreciation playlist was simple: clean lyrics and family friendly. Some are obvious, and some we threw in there for a humorous twist. Give them a preview or download, below! Let me know in the comments if there are any you would add.
Superhero Selfie Photo Booth
We had often talked about the idea of renting a photo booth for our parties and banquets at church, but at $600 and up for a rental, the cost usually exceeded our budget. Enter the “Selfie Photo Booth!”
The concept couldn’t be more simple to execute! Create a backdrop to match your party theme, and provide a bin full of costume accessories. Then let your guests take their own photos with personal cameras and smartphones.
For the Superhero Selfie photo booth, we needed three simple things:
- Superhero cityscape backdrop
- Black sheet or draping
- A string of white Christmas lights
- A bin of dress-up props
Most of what we needed, we already had on hand. We splurged a little on the cityscape (~$40). You could certainly make one out of cardboard and paint for an even more economical solution.
In our example, the black draping is set atop our Children’s Check-in area. You could just as easily tack the draping to the wall, poles, whatever you have in your space. You could even use a couple of ladders. The key is to make sure the backdrop is a few feet taller than the average person, to allow some room for your backdrop and lights to peek above where they are standing. Or, you could make a sit-down version; just ensure the bulk of your background decorations are slightly ABOVE shoulder level with enough overlap behind to create a nice overall effect.
For your bin of dress-up props, you can get a lot of fun things without spending ANY money. Raid your kids’ dress up stuff, check with your children’s ministry, or local teachers. Here’s a list to get you started:
- Masks
- Funny/big glasses
- Sunglasses
- Hats of various shapes and sizes
- Silly headbands
- Scarves
- Googly eyes
- Necklaces
People have a ball with photo booths and with a little imagination — and VERY little money — you can have one at YOUR next party. Have fun!
Superhero Mask Craft
At our Superhero-themed Volunteer Appreciation party at church, we put these masks out on the tables for people to decorate. I was amazed at the creativity! My favorite one was created by my friend Danielle, who titled her creation “Madame Rocket Nose.”
Mask-making was inexpensive and the adults and kids all had a lot of fun with it. We kept the mess under control by using self-adhesive decorations and markers. If you don’t mind more mess, you can add items like glitter or other objects that need to be glued. Since we had food being served at the same tables, we kept the materials for the masks “clean,” which I think everyone can appreciate. You can use this idea for several different themes — think Mardi Gras, Fall Festival, Mystery Dinner Theater — lots of possibilities! Here are the materials:
- White masks, buy in bulk
- Self-adhesive craft foam stickers (we used glitter stars and outer space shapes to go with the theme)
- Self-adhesive jewels
- Sharpies in various colors – we put out 6 colors per table
You can customize your mask decorations to the theme of the party. Since we had a superhero theme, the outer space shapes and star shapes worked really well with people’s costumes. We just set the materials out on the tables and let the magic begin!
Here are links to all the materials I ordered for the masks on Amazon.
The “I Need A Hero” Game
So we had this awesome theme for our volunteer appreciation party this year. AWESOME. It was: “Volunteers are SUPER” with all things superhero-y. Indeed, volunteers are the superheroes that truly make the world go ’round. And when you really think about it, most of the superheroes you grew up idolizing were VOLUNTEERS. So, it works! We had the decorations, the invitations, an awesome photo booth idea, and now we just had to come up with some entertainment. A song? Thought’s of Bonnie Tyler’s “I Need a Hero” rung through our minds. Strike one. A video tribute? Nice idea, but we were already doing a video shout out from the pastor. How about some kind of game?
I was coming up blank and running out of time as I juggled other projects and time was tick, tick, ticking away before our big event. Like any good, worn-out creative type, I trolled Pinterest to rip off — er, borrow — someone else’s idea. Only, I couldn’t really find a game that worked on the scale of a room of 200 people. Then, I found this Power Punch Game idea from blogger Becky Lee Burke. If you don’t follow the link, I’ll sum it up: paper bowls covered in tissue paper with a prize inside, mounted on a backboard and hung to a fence. Kids could “power punch” through the tissue to get the prize inside.
I loved the concept, original and perfect for a superhero party. But, I had two problems: (1) no budget for prizes, and (2) I needed a way to scale the concept for a large crowd. So again like any good, worn-out creative type would do, I took someone else’s awesome idea and modified it.
In the end, this game is “super” easy, inexpensive to create, and was a HUGE hit. There is really no competition or point to it, other than entertainment (and being chosen also means receiving one of our SUPER-DUPER POWERADE TROPIES (see below)). Sometimes the silly ones are the best kind of games!
So here is how it goes:
Set up a tall backboard at the front of the room. Our room has a stage. We used inexpensive Coroplast for the backboard (in fact, we already had the coroplast leftover from another project). We stood up a 4X8 sheet on its short end and use zip ties to attach to two poles that we normally use to support pipe-and-drape walls. But really, you can use any sort of sturdy backdrop.
On the backdrop, mount circles made of cardstock. We glued the ends of two sheets of vertically trimmed 8-1/2X11 cardstock together to form a circle about 8 inches across and about 8 inches tall once it protruded from the board. We taped on the inside of the circles to attach them to the backdrop; this was plenty strong and the tape was never seen. Nice and clean. We used red, blue and yellow cardstock for nice pops of color. On the top of each circle, we taped target shapes and “POW” shapes. We pre-scored the paper with an X so that people didn’t knock the whole thing down trying to punch through. (Note, you could use tissue paper here like the original idea which doesn’t need to be scored. Regular paper DOES. It’s surprisingly hard to punch through a regular sheet of paper without destroying everything around it. We used it because we liked the patterns and visual interest of printed shapes.)
With all the circles mounted on the board, we placed our printed challenges inside. We placed one challenge inside each circle. Remember, the point of these challenges and questions is NOT to be challenging! They were created to be silly and ridiculously easy, actually. I’ve included our original list, which includes a few more than you really need. You can do this game with any number of circles and any number of questions. The one thing that I will caution, is that actually picking out the people, getting them up on stage and introducing them, having them answer the challenge, and giving them their (totally awesome) PowerAde trophy takes time. With just 12 questions, our game ran about 20 minutes. So here they are… the challenges were:
- Name three of Superman’s powers. (Answer: Heat vision, icy breath, super speed, flight, super strength, and nearly invincible.)
- What is Batman’s true identity? (Answer: Bruce Wayne)
- Find one person with red lipstick, chap-stick, or lip-gloss on their person.
- If you were a super hero, what would your power be? Demonstrate it.
- Who is Batman’s sidekick? (Answer: Boy Wonder, Robin, Richard “Dick” Grayson)
- Find one person with a cape, mask, or insignia and bring them onstage.
- Can you demonstrate how Superman would fly around the stage?
- Show how you would take down the bad guys if you were Spiderman.
- What is Spiderman’s real name? (Answer: Peter Parker)
- Find someone at your table that knows the name of the newspaper Clark Kent works for. (Answer: The Daily Planet)
- Find a person dressed like a well-known super hero and bring them onstage.
- T or F? Batman, Superman, and Green Lantern are ALL members of the Justice League. (Answer: True)
- Find and identify one person with a mask on.
- What song would you pick to be your ‘Hero Anthem’ or theme music? Perform a few bars.
- As a volunteer, what super power would best help you? Why? Demonstrate how you would use it.
The game is hosted by a superhero of your choosing to be the emcee. We had Batman. He walks around the room and picks each contestant at random. Our Batman, Pastor Bryan Sells, has a lot of personality and he brought that special something! Be mindful to pick people from the crowd from various volunteer ministries and age groups.
Use music to keep things moving. We played snips of songs from our SuperHero Playlist at Batman was walking around, as as people walked up to the stage. Not only did this keep things feeling like they were “moving” at all times — sometimes, the music inspired people to do comical dance moves and other funny things.
After a person is chosen, they are brought to the stage at the front of the room where they punch out one of the circles from the game board and pull out their challenge. They then answer it or act it out on the spot. Batman has the person read the question/challenge out loud on the mic, and then when they answer the question or complete the challenge, they get a prize. We gave them these awesome PowerAde “trophies.”
When creating games like this, there is always that feeling inside — that nagging little “this could go either way.” I was thrilled that our crowd REALLY got into the game and most people really hammed it up! It was a big success.