"It has been my dream job": H.O.P.E. Volleyball on community, team management, and how a festival survives for decades

Laura Andrew (left) and Lisa Hollingshead (right) of H.O.P.E

It's around lunchtime as Laura Andrews and Lisa Hollingshead of H.O.P.E. (Helping Other People Everywhere) walk into OFN's office. It's immediately clear how accommodating they are and how little they wish to impose ("Are you sure you don't want to eat first?") despite the fact that they've come at our invitation as highly-welcome guests.

As we sit down for our interview in late autumn, H.O.P.E. (most known for H.O.P.E. Volleyball Summerfest) has just held its second annual H.O.P.E. Rockfest, featuring Canadian band Dear Rouge as headliners alongside a battle-of-the-bands style showcase format for the local openers (won by indie rock act The New Hires). They've come to OFN's office to talk about Rockfest, H.O.P.E.'s history, their team's work philosophy, and how a festival runs as long as H.O.P.E. Volleyball Summerfest has.

"We took H.O.P.E. to the Dominican Republic. We took H.O.P.E. to Halifax. We took H.O.P.E. to New Brunswick"

OFN: I was wondering if you could start just by telling us a little bit about what you consider HOPE's purpose to be?

Laura Andrews (Executive Director):

[HOPE] started at Britannia beach. It was started by Fred Logan when Terry Fox was doing his run across the country. Fred had suddenly lost his mother and wanted to do a fundraiser, so he developed the first volleyball tournament at Britannia beach. And I think they they got about 50 teams and maybe raised $3,000 and everybody there had a lot of fun. So they thought, let's make this bigger. So they registered for a charity number and registered the name, and 43 years later, it moved from Britannia beach.

I don't know exactly how many years they were at Britannia, if it was one or two or three, but quite soon, they moved to Mooney's Bay Beach because there was more space. And as the years went on, they grew the teams, the volleyball teams, and it was just strictly volleyball. We actually have a record of every charity that has been given money since the beginning to today. We have given 4.7 or $4.5 million over the 43 years. And we have a list of slightly over 150 charities that have received funding -- when they started in '82 I think it was just one or two charities.

So H.O.P.E.'s whole goal was to give back to the community, right? And because of the success with the volleyball tournament, there's been a number of different board members that thought we should do more, even though it takes almost a full year to plan that SummerFest event, because it cost a lot of money and a lot of infrastructure is put in place. We thought when we do a really good job of this. We should be doing other events. So back in the day, I would say, I started 33 years ago, and the organization's been around 43 years. So the first 10 years I wasn't there, but 33 years, we've had other events like H.O.P.E. at the Hop, which, back in those days, a '50s kind of dance charitable event was big, right? And we actually ended up selling that event to one of our local charities. I don't think they kept it going very long. And then we had other smaller events, like we took H.O.P.E. to the Dominican Republic. We took H.O.P.E. to Halifax. We took H.O.P.E. to New Brunswick.

It was just volleyball, from '82 until the early '90s, where we added the entertainment component. And we started, I think the first band we ever booked was Kim Mitchell, okay?

Lisa Hollingshead (Event Coordinator): And that's pretty much when you entered into the scene, is when the entertainment started.

Laura: Yeah, I was a couple years before that, maybe two years before that. And once they entered the entertainment component, I was involved in booking the bands and managing the entertainment. I started out as volunteer, and my first first event volunteering, my jaw was on the ground, and I thought, I want to do this for a living!

I was events management, which was a volunteer position, but because I had spent so much time as an event manager and being involved in the organization, I knew a lot about the event. It was around 2006 we lost our logistics manager, and I was on the board at that time. I proposed to the board that I get hired as the logistics manager part time. And that was my first job with H.O.P.E.. Then in 2010 I became the operations manager, and in 2020 I became the Executive Director.

Left: H.O.P.E. Executive Director Laura Andrews, Right: H.O.P.E. founder Fred Logan

OFN: That actually is a really smooth segue into my next question, which is to ask a little bit about your personal journey towards becoming involved with H.O.P.E. What was your path that led you to H.O.P.E. in the first place?

Lisa: My starting point was that I had a background in recreation management with a focus on events and sporting events. So I thought, well, [H.O.P.E.] sounds like a pretty cool organization. It marries the art, music, the entertainment, with the sports— they're not mutually exclusive. They can be at the same event, and people can enjoy doing both things at the same time. The volunteers love that. The participants love that.

So I joined up with the planning team. And the planning team is really, really unique. When I was still on the planning team, I was really interested in lotteries. As you know, I was interested in fundraising in general. That's another aspect of my background. While I was volunteering with H.O.P.E., I was also working with charities doing fundraising. So [given] the fact that also H.O.P.E. is a fundraiser too, this is super valuable. Even though I'm working for charities, I'm going to keep this position. And I had encountered lotteries through my through my fundraising, through my work, but I never really got to to manage it directly. I asked Laura, can I take this on? Like, I'll take responsibility. I'll apply for the license, I'll work with the third-party vendor that's in charge of the software that allows you to actually sell the tickets.

Laura: And I was all for it during COVID, which hurt everybody out there, but it really hurt us a lot. We were lucky to have a slush fund that helped us get through COVID, but we're having a hard time now. Because coming off of COVID, we haven't really been making money, but when we were in COVID, we did lotteries, like everybody else did. We did lotteries, and it was hard to manage. It was confusing, it was time consuming. And when she came up to me and said, I want to do the I was like, yes, yes, that'd be great. And she said, I want to learn about it. I said, Great. So she took that on, yeah.

Lisa: But I was like, you know, but I, I was already been involved. I had the trust, right? Because the planning team is so involved, it allows them to sort of work closely with staff and, you know, we always impress upon the planning team of staff, and we take this to heart when we're on the planning team. Is that we're necessary. We don't just show up for the event day and help volunteer, although those type of volunteers, we need them too: people that just come, they work and they do the thing and go home. We absolutely need those, but we need that extra layer of responsibility to make the event go. So I felt valued! Laura: She was a volunteer too. She wasn't hired. Lisa: No, I just wanted to do it. I was still volunteering at this point, when I did the lottery, and I did everything, every piece of it, from all of the administrative stuff to like, actually, at the beach on event day, going around and selling the tickets. I did every piece of it.

And, you know, it was a great learning experience. We learned that it is very time consuming and expensive for small organizations to do 50-50 lotteries, and maybe it's not for everyone. So we're not doing that fundraising anymore, but I know how to do it now. So if we decide that it is worthwhile, we can pick it up again and incorporate it back into Summerfest and other events that we're doing.

"When people come, they're like, "Oh my God, this thing is huge." They're shocked at how big it is."

OFN: If someone who's never been to H.O.P.E. Volleyball Summerfest decides to go, but they were to ask you, like, what can I expect when I arrive? What can I expect to do? What can I expect to see? How would you pers onally describe that to them?

Lisa: That's a great question!

Laura: How I would describe it to anybody who would call the office and say, "I want to play in this" is: Your registration will get you a concert ticket if you want to go to the concert, your registration will get you into all the bars on the site, not just the concert, but other bars that we have on site. You will get a minimum of five games. If you're in Competitive, you will get playoff games. If you're in Corporate, you'll get playoff games. And if you're in Recreational, you won't get playoff games, but we will take all of the score sheets from the Recreational courts and find a winner from each one, and draw out of a hat and give five free teams away to next year's event.

We'd tell them about the entertainment we have had and the entertainment we're going to have. Also your registration would get you lunch for your entire team. Grill Master [Express] is one of our major sponsors that has been with us for at least 17 years, and they provide lunch for the 7000 players, which is kind of amazing. Even when they did it for the 10,320 it was amazing, the undertaking they [did].

We would also tell them that there are vendors set up that would offer games and contests and freebies and stuff like that for them to enjoy. And it's a beach environment! What better can it be to go down to a beach with 10 of your friends or more, set up a tent and and enjoy some volleyball on a beautiful day?

We do have music on the beach as well from our radio sponsor that does the game on, game off calls. In between, they'll play music. And then, if you want to take a break and go have a beer, you can go to eat in one of the beer gardens, and you can enjoy some of the music our our show.

Our event is unique because it's a daytime concert. Everything is done by 7pm. It's a long day. You're starting at seven, you're done at seven. It's 12 hours of full playing volleyball, partying and watching bands. And it has been like that since the beginning.

Lisa: People look at the list of benefits [and say] like, yeah, that's something I want to do. But I think what's not really captured in that description is when people come, they're like, "Oh my God, this thing is huge." They're shocked at how big it is. There just really is no peer to Summerfest. I mean, you could say it's the biggest beach volleyball one day tournament, which it is.

You can understand that concept, you know, intellectually. But on the ground when I first was there, it was just like, how is this possible? Maybe because Bluesfest is going on, and that's such a big imprint in the culture of Ottawa and what's going on in the summer festival scene, we just kind of fly under the radar a little bit. So people just are surprised and delighted about what they see when they come for the first time.

Laura: That's the first timers, but people who are with us know. Lisa: Yeah! Laura: And we do have a lot of really loyal people that just keep coming back, that I even hear them say, "This is the best event of the summer. I plan my summer around H.O.P.E.". You know, that kind of thing we've even had people meet at H.O.P.E. A couple years ago, we had a wedding that took place where the bride and the groom came down to the beach after they got married and ran around the beach, because that's where they met. And they got married on H.O.P.E. day, and they came down to the beach and ran around in their wedding wedding attire, with their bridesmaids, with their flowers, ran around the whole beach, and when we stopped to talk to them and interview them, they said "We met at H.O.P.E., like three years ago."

OFN: Wow! And when was that?

Laura: That was in 2019.

OFN: That's a wonderful story.

Laura: And we even have planning team members that met. I think that's another thing that makes us unique, is that -- I'm not sure of other festival organizations as big as us that might have a core planning team -- a lot of festival events have employees. [H.O.P.E. is] just us and one other employee, but for many years, it was just me and one other person, and during COVID, it was just me: one employee. So we have to have a planning team to manage the other aspects of the event, like a bar committee, a security committee, a volunteer committee, a score keeping committee. Those are all planning team people. I'm not sure if there's other festival events that have a planning team.

Lisa: Not that I know of, quite like that. That's a very unique offering.

Laura: So there's one year a long time ago where two Planning Team people met each other and they are married to this day.

OFN: Wow. So H.O.P.E. brings people together, literally brings people together. That's amazing! I noticed that there's just so much there's just so much programming that that H.O.P.E. does, not just the Summer Fest, but everything [else], and it's quite striking to hear that it's always two or three people.

I was wondering if you could tell me if there's anything that H.O.P.E does on an organizational level to make sure that everything is well coordinated, to make sure that communication flows well, to make sure everything is getting done at the proper time.

"These things can can ramp up, and do well, and then they die. It's all dependent upon the people who are dedicated"

Lisa: [In terms of] management structures, I mean, we have a planning team. They're active from April to July. Then there's that fallow period where you don't want all these people to forget about you. But I think our membership structure allows people to be involved with H.O.P.E. year-round.

Laura: We have a very involved board which is very important, too. They're volunteers, they're board members, they are the ones that work on the strategy of our organization. Especially this current board, that's been in place for five years now, has implemented a lot of new things that we're doing.

Like we have an Expand Our Give committee, and this is what you're talking about [in terms of] other programs. We have an initiative where we've adopted a park and we clean the park. The park that we adopted is Britannia Beach where we started. So our name is on that park, and twice a year we'll go out and do a cleaning, and we're doing one soon. We have kind of invited our volunteers from this year's event to come out and join us, if they like, but it's typically been our membership and our board members that have come out to do the cleaning of the park.

Another initiative we've done, especially during COVID, was Bags of Hope, where we would purchase sundry items like toothbrushes, toothpaste, shampoo, socks, gloves. And we would put them in bags that had our H.O.P.E name on it, and we literally would hang them on doors within our community where H.O.P.E takes place, where there's co-op housing. These are things that don't happen a lot, but they happen at least once or twice a year, where we do these other programs.

OFN: I'm curious, where does that initiative come from? Because it would be so easy to say, "Let's not overextend ourselves. We know we do this thing really well. Let's just focus on that." But instead, there's this approach where it's like, "No, let's go do these things, where it's not necessarily what our brand has done traditionally."

Laura: No. We want our name out there all year round. We don't want it just out for the Summerfest event. It's hard to do because people think of us as [just] volleyball, but we still do it.

And to go back to the very first part of this question, you asked how is it that we're able to manage it or maintain it? And I've got to tell you, hats off to Lisa, Riley, and myself, we are very organized people. We meet every Monday. We go over what it is that we have to do. These instructions on these other events come down from our board. They also help out with a lot of this stuff, but the actual communicating, getting it put together, usually comes from us in the office. And I do believe that we are very well organized.

OFN: Well you must be!

Laura: For our event to be as successful as it has been for as many years as it has, I believe that we have had the right people working in this organization that have driven it. [For] every little tiny thing that could go wrong, our minds are there to kind of pick up on it and say, "Oh, oh, did you do this?" "Oh, no, we can do it." We get it done. One of the things that I'm really proud of is, since I have hired Lisa on, we have done these weekly huddles on Monday where we go over what we need to do for the next weekend. That's what keeps us online and keeps us routine. With the three of us meeting, we're like, "Oh, we've got to do this. Yeah, okay, I'll take that, right?"

But I'm telling you that all that stuff comes down from our board. And those these board members, very busy people. They've got amazing, very active, busy jobs, but even they put in the time to help out with all this stuff. They might even create the line of communication and give it to us to put out there. They might call the city and set something up. But we still get the communication and get the people there. So between the board and the office, we work great together to make sure that these little things happen. And if there's anything that goes wrong, I'm telling you, whoever's involved doesn't see it. It's only us in the background that see it.

Lisa: Yeah, and I find too [that] the right person in the job is important. You have to be committed. I feel like sometimes, the fact that we have such a committed board, and we have a membership structure, people that are committed and care, there are members that care so much, they continue their membership, and they've moved away from Ottawa. They live in P.E.I.! But they're still involved. So that's really inspiring. We must be doing something good here!

OFN: Yeah, well, especially if you move to P.E.I., out of sight, out of mind, usually, but not in this case, obviously. And not only just [these] smaller initiatives, but you're even branching out into things like H.O.P.E. Rockfest.

Lisa: Yeah, it just happened!

Laura: That was our second year doing that. And that came from the board, because the president of the board is also in charge of being backstage at the Summer Fest event. He's basically the wrangler for the bands backstage. And in a board meeting, he [asked], "What do we do well?" And he said, "You know, I think what we do well is the volleyball tournament, but the concert we do, well, why don't we do a separate concert?" And because I've been with H.O.P.E. for 33 years, [I remembered that] we did do this with Rogers television in the early '90s, and it was called The H.O.P.E. Sessions. It was a band competition, it was held at Barrymore's, and it was on Rogers Television. It lasted about three years, we had bands play, and there was a ranking system, and we would choose a band to win that would end up playing the Summerfest.

It petered out because things change. These things can can ramp up, and do well, and then they die. It's all dependent upon the people who are dedicated, and whoever might have been involved in those initiatives years ago left, for whatever reason people move on. They get married, they have kids, they leave the country, they leave the province, they move and then the people coming in move to something different.

OFN: So it almost sounds very personal, like it what you end up doing depends very much on the composition of the team.

Laura: The board or the membership, yeah, it's a collaboration. And we do work really well with our board.

Lisa: The membership helps keep everything reasonable. Like if someone had this wild idea that might that they think is great, but it might not translate to what we do.

You have that board, and then the membership, and the board is drawn from the membership, [so] in order to get on that, you put your sweat equity into H.O.P.E. So I think that allows you to have that pool of committed people will drop away and move away and right. But we're, we're structured in a way that people can still be involved, right, because they those members are the ones that select the charities that we represent, that we raise money for every year. It's not the board that decides, not the staff that decides. It's the membership as a whole. And boards are members, so they vote as well, right? I think people really value that.

Laura: The whole purpose of H.O.P.E. is to give back to the community. Our mission statement is: a volunteer-run organization that plans events and has fun doing so. That is what H.O.P.E. is mostly about.

Everything we do, every little event we do, is to give back to the community. And we are a charity ourselves. So Rockfest was actually set up so that we could maybe make some money because of the shortfall of coming off of COVID. We raise all this money for other charities, and our main income was coming from Summerfest. But when you don't have Summerfest for three years because of COVID, that kitty we had gets dwindled down. Well, how are we going to make money for ourselves? So that we can continue to keep giving back with some of these other projects that we have done.

There's another project that we want to do, along with Bags of Hope [and] cleaning the park, and that is a grocery program. We want to be able to maybe, at Thanksgiving or Christmas, give back to the community by buying some families their groceries.

Lisa: In a fun way! We haven't figured out how exactly yet.

Laura: We haven't figured out how we'll do it yet, but it's come from the board.

Lisa: Yeah, we'll just, you know, surprise and delight!

Because we want that giving back to the community and having fun while doing it. I think we can manage that. Laura: It'll be a fun event when we do it! And it will either be, it won't be this year, but it'll probably be 2026 or '27 where we'll be doing that kind of thing, or [the rest of the team] will be. [To Lisa:] Or who knows, I might help! Lisa: Yeah we might see you come out for the grocery event! Maybe Summerfest you're retired from but you might continue to take part in the smaller stuff.

"You don't have to always have cash sponsors, if they can help offset the funding or offset the price of something"

OFN: Even now you're continuing to expand! Which sort of leads me to another question I was curious about. Because I know from experience that putting on a single event across multiple years is a very hard thing to do.

Let's say someone came to you, they've got their own festival that is a small festival, and they say, "I don't know how to get beyond just the first year. How do I think multiple years ahead?"

What's the best way to approach trying to make this festival into a long-standing event? What would be your advice? Is it to just focus on the present? Is it to focus a decade down the line?

Laura: Well, I've actually had that question many, many, many, many years.

We get calls into the office [from people] who want to do something similar to ours, and want to know how to get started. And some of them even want to have a H.O.P.E. volleyball tournament in their city or their town or their province. And what I've always advised is you've got to start small. And if you have a break even year, that's great, but your first year, you might not make any money. You've got to stick with it.

You have to have a dedicated team that will put in the work, and sponsorship, sponsorship, sponsorship. It's very important. It's hard to get, but it's very important, especially when you're starting out and you don't have a known backing. It's a little bit easier for us to get sponsors, because people know us. But when you're starting out, sometimes, if you have people who are invested in doing this project, they already work for big companies, and might offer up their company as a sponsor. And you don't have to always have cash sponsors, if they can help offset the funding or offset the price of something that's always really super helpful.

You have to have a budget to work with, and you have to be able to pay things up front, because I'm telling you, there's nobody out there that will do it without getting at least 50% payment up front, especially if you're new.

So that's the kind of advice that I would give people, is to surround yourself with people who are invested in working with you and who maybe also have connections with companies that can help do what you need to get your event done.

Whatever your event is, you gotta have some sort of money, and you can also -- I'm not good at this -- but reach out for funding from the government. If there's a project that is fundable by the government, by all means, apply for that kind of funding anywhere and everywhere you can. And if you aren't good at doing it, you can hire a fund writer, which is what I ended up doing. I think Lisa might try to do it as she goes on, but I ended up hiring Brody [Fraser of Active8 Solutions].

Lisa: Yeah, starting small and being willing to have a couple of losing or break-even-at-best years in the beginning to grow your event. It's a loss leader for legacy, because once you can manage through those first couple of years of losing, making not very much, at that point, it might just take off. And then it becomes established, people have a lot of fun, and you've got credibility, and then that credibility will bring in more for you.

"You're gonna make mistakes. You're gonna forget things that, like, yeah, that was so obvious."

OFN: This is a fascinating discussion to me. Is there any advice for those two or three years when things might be really hard going? I'm not necessarily talking about practical like, "Do this, do this," but even [talking about] mindset, the right approach, anything that might help someone get through those really lean years before things start taking off. Do you have any advice around that?

Laura: It's hard to say, because every individual is different, and you can get down pretty easily if you're not making, and then you have to have people around you that support you and say, "Nope, I know we didn't make any money, but this was good." And, you know, do surveys, and the surveys can help boost your confidence. If people say, "Oh, my God, I had a great time", they don't know that you didn't make money, but if they had a great time, then maybe you can build on that.

Lisa: And learn from your mistakes! You know, okay, we tried this. It didn't quite work. So now let's, let's try this. You have to be willing to have those hard conversations yourself. You're like, Oh, I was really into that idea, but it just didn't work. And maybe I think [this particular reason is why].

Laura: I think that's how we became successful too. For every year that we have an event, we have a post-mortem, and we get feedback from our day-of volunteers, from our planning team, volunteers from our charities. And a lot of that feedback is really good. And every year we've been doing that for 43 years, somebody comes up with something new. You hear a lot of stuff. Someone like me who's been there for so long, I hear a lot of the same stuff that can't be helped or can't be managed around. But there's a lot of [great] feedback that's given [too]. And so I think that if someone's starting a new venture, get as much feedback as you can and see if you can build on it. Don't get discouraged.

Lisa: We have this experience a little bit, because Rockfest is new, you know, it's small and growing, and, you know, it's not wildly successful financially right out the gate, or anything like that.

Laura: No, and we've tried two different things; it's only been two years! Maybe we haven't got the right niche of it just yet, but we're not ready to give up on it, because it was a good event!

Dear Rouge (left) headlined 2025's H.O.P.E. Rockfest, while The New Hires (right) won the showcase portion of the show.

Lisa: Yes, people like it! We just have to figure out the right configuration of how much, you know, we spend to get that entertainment and how many bands we have and the right venue.

OFN: So it's an iterative process. Don't try to get everything right off the bat. Laura: You won't. You won't. You won't.

Lisa: You have to be willing, like when you first, especially in the beginning, you're gonna make mistakes. You're gonna forget things that, like, yeah, that was so obvious. How could I forget to do that? But it's just when everything is so new, right? Something should have been managed in a different way. But you just have to, you know, adjust on the fly. You just have to be willing to have to be able to do that. If you're not the right kind of person that can handle that kind of stress, maybe you shouldn't involved in a new event.

OFN: This has all been golden, I've got to say.I do have one last question for you, which is: is there something about H.O.P.E. that you wish more people understood, something that you think might be misunderstood, might be a bit of a misconception, or maybe something the average person out in Ottawa or elsewhere knew?

Laura: I think [it's H.O.P.E.'s status as a charity]. I think that when people come to play volleyball, a lot of them don't know that we're a charity, that we're giving to charities, even though we do market it and we do put it out there and it is all over the place. I think that sometimes people are just, "I'm going to go to the beach and have fun! And why is that so expensive? Why is this so expensive?" Well, okay, it costs a lot of money to put this on, and then if we have any money left over, we're giving it to these people.

And I was even thinking when we were talking here, we didn't talk much about the charities, but that is what H.O.P.E. is all about, giving back to the community. And I'm not sure, I'm not sure, [Lisa] might have a different take on this, but I'm not sure if everybody knows that we are a charity and that we are giving back.

Lisa: People definitely don't know that we're a charity! No, they think we're an organization that is just for-profit but we also have these charities that benefit from whatever we can manage to raise on top of what we we need. But most of what we raise beyond putting on the event goes to the charities.

Laura: That's right, and that's why a lot of our labour comes from volunteers, because we don't have money to be paying 14 staff, which would be great if we had 14 staff members to help us put this event on. I have to say, I am so lucky in my last year to have three of us in the office, because it has been mostly me for the last couple of years, and it is just [great] having the people in the office right now that are dedicated, smart, strong and doers. They get stuff done. We get stuff done. It's, it's, it's been a dream year, for sure.

Lisa: It's been a lot of fun. I'm sad Laura's retiring. I don't even, I don't think I've fully like... I'm thinking about it, like I haven't even accepted it! Too traumatic.

Laura: But I've said they can call me any time anytime. I'm not disappearing. I just won't actually be in the office. But if, they don't know who to reach out to, or they don't know where a file is, they just need to call me and I'll tell them where to go to get it, you know? And you know, [if] there's some stuff she wants me to do for setup. I won't be at the event on event day, right? But if she wants me to help out with, you know, just where I put a tent or where I put the stage, I will go there and do that. Not a problem. I live close to the beach. It's not a problem. I'm going to be retired. I'm going to be gardening. I have to walk down to the beach, I'm okay with it. But you won't find that often with people who retire, they just kind of remove themselves.

This organization has been my love for 33 years! I was blown away by what H.O.P.E. does, and how H.O.P.E. was managed back then, and it was my goal, and I set it in play, and I remember the first time I was there: "I want to do this. I want to do this for a living!"

And [now] I've been doing it for, well, I've been there for 33 years, but I've been working for at least 20 years for H.O.P.E. And it has been my dream job!

Learn more about H.O.P.E. at hopehelps.com