5 Guidelines for Trunk or Treat Volunteers
Photo by Holly Russo at Church of Hope
Trunk or Treats are one of the most popular Fall outreaches. They’re quick, easy to set up, and easy to clean up. They can be a ton of fun or total drag. The deciding factor for the success of your event is the trunks. Your trunks are the main attraction. You can and should include inflatables, hayrides, food trucks and more. But that’s not what’s going to keep your neighborhood coming back year after year.
So how do you make your trunks the best they can be? I’ve run Trunk or Treats for years and made plenty of mistakes. (Some I’ll talk about in this post.) I’ve outline the best guidelines for your trunks that will keep your people coming back again and again.
1. Candy
Fall Festivals, have to have candy. That’s what the people coming to your event are looking for.
So have candy.
A lot of it.
I ask all my trunk volunteers to provide at least 200 pieces of candy. I always provide more, but this way, they will have enough to get started. They’ll have buy-in and save you from going to the store at 8pm.
That 200 number depends on how big your event is. I tried to save my volunteers a few dollars one year by requiring only 100 pieces. Unfortunately, they blew through that much in the first 20 minutes. Since my Trunk or Treat is 2-3 hours, I had to provide a lot more candy than I originally planned. Thankfully Sam’s Club was next door. We emptied 2 40-gallon bins of candy that night.
To keep my trunks stocked, I place a volunteer in charge of candy distribution. This person walks around pulling a wagon full of candy and a bucket. They work their way through the trunks keeping the trunks coffers full. They also keep an eye on the stores, so if we’re running low, we can be a few steps ahead of the problem.
2. Games
In my early years, I didn’t challenge my trunk volunteers to provide games. All they needed was a decorated trunk and some candy. However, one year, my Trunk or Treat doubled in attendance while my trunks halved in number. I had a few inflatables to help alleviate the crowd, but it wasn’t enough. Some kids were literally running laps around my trunks getting candy.
So, the next year, to add more fun and slow down candy distribution, I challenged my volunteers to have some kind of activity or game. If you’ve done a traditional Fall Festival with carnival games, this is what I’m talking about. It was amazing to see the creativity of my volunteers. Some great games were fishing, bowling, toss across, and a photo booth. During COVID, I had one volunteer make a chute out of PVC pipe and would slide the candy to the kids.
Kids loved moving from trunk to trunk playing each game. They don’t have to be elaborate. In fact, the easier the better. If my volunteer couldn’t think of anything, then I would provide a game from my kidmin they could easily run.
If you haven’t added games to your trunks, I highly recommend it.
3. Decorations
The whole point of a Trunk or Treat is to have decorations. It’s no fun to just pull into a parking spot and open a blank trunk with a bucket. That said, you need to put some parameters around the decorations.
Mainly, they can’t do anything scary or having anything to do with the occult. I’m from the South, and I’ve served in churches where I couldn’t even say the word Halloween. No matter how cute that little witch is, it’s not allowed as a costume or decoration.
A few years back, I had a person leave my church because I had a little girl from the neighborhood dressed as a witch. She made it into the following year’s highlight video for half a second. The person thought we were promoting witchcraft and left. I have my own opinions on that sequence of events, but I like to remember Paul’s ministry philosophy. He was all things to all people.
If you think your people will be offended by it, they don’t do it. It’s not worth the argument.
To really challenge our trunk volunteers, I gave prizes for the best trunks. I recruited some volunteers to serve on the selection committee. You would have thought I was giving away a million dollars, not a $50 visa gift card. My volunteers went all in and made some truly incredible designs. They made the overall event that much better.
4. Times
This is a short point, and for years, I didn’t think I needed to spell it out. But one year about halfway through my event, I had a volunteer tell me he was all packed up and ready to go. I was so surprised, I think I said, “go where?”
I had to get his giant SUV from the middle of our line of trunks through a crowd of hundreds of people safely and quickly. Thankfully SUV stands for Sport Utility Vehicles and offroad easily. He was willing and able to jump a curb to make his exit.
Ask your volunteers to arrive at least an hour early and plan to stay the entire time. People will start showing up 30 minutes before your start time expecting to walk through. This is not a good time to have cars driving up and down your parking lot.
If a volunteer can’t stay the whole time, then they can serve somewhere else or help another trunk. You want to have as little car traffic as possible to keep things as safe as possible.
5. Show love and build relationships
It may be controversial, but I don’t do a Gospel message with my Trunk or Treats. Since the event is come and go trying to get everyone to gather in one place for just 10 minutes can be a real challenge.
But just because I don’t do a formal Gospel presentation doesn’t mean I can’t share the love of Christ. This is what I challenge all my trunk volunteers to do. I want them to love on the neighborhood kids and families. I want them to learn names and share experiences. I want them to create the most welcoming environment possible. Whatever we can do to help people feel comfortable. Later, we'll invite our guests to come back for a service where we will present the Gospel.
Going back to the little witch story, I like to tell my volunteers to not get mad when the community acts like the community. You’re hopefully reaching people who don’t know Jesus and don’t know about your nothing scary rule. And that’s ok. Jesus told us to come as we are. So, don’t get mad when the witches, zombies, and ghosts show up. They need Jesus. Condemning them for their costume choice isn’t going to win you any points.
So, love them and invite them back.
The trunks in Trunk or Treats can make or break your event. Share these guidelines with your volunteers and create a great event everyone will love.