REVIEW: Cashing in Volunteer Hours for Concert Tickets with Concerted
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY ALEAH ANTONIO ☆
Concert Photos By Ava Antonio
The last time I volunteered for a non-profit was probably high school. When I was 16, I worked at a thrift store in my hometown on the weekends to fulfill my extracurricular requirements. I’ve participated in mutual aid, donation drives and the occasional physical labor job in my adult life, but haven’t formally dedicated time to a charity.
Concerts are a different story. I go to one minimum once a month, but more often once every week. It’s not only part of my job, but it’s my favorite pastime and my biggest joy. When I was 16 working in that thrift store, I didn’t have any money to drive hours outside of my suburban town and see bands I desperately loved. I would have done anything to even see a local band play in a backyard.
There are a couple ways you can swing a concert for free. If you’re near a DIY venue like LA’s The Smell or Berkeley’s 924 Gilman, you can volunteer as a door person or at the snack bar to see whatever band is playing that night. You could take a chance and apply to work at Coachella or Outside Lands, shuffling in cars or directing guests for the prospect of frolicking away to a band’s set.
But, what if there was a way to do this for any band, in any city?
WHAT IS CONCERTED?
Founded by Sarah Murray and run by a core team including Sarah Murray, Preston Gull, Mari Crisler, Kate Buuck, Audrey Hertel, plus countless other collaborators, Concerted is a non-profit platform where people can volunteer at local non-profits and exchange their hours for entertainment: concert tickets, sporting events, movie passes, and more. Concerted launched in 2020 in the Tri-State area and is now directly partnered in 14 cities, supports tours nationwide, and has nonprofits in every city.
It sounds like the perfect opportunity. So, what’s the catch? After going through the process myself, I can't say that there is one.
The process is straightforward: Make a Concerted account, find a volunteer project that you resonate with, show up, confirm your hours, and trade them in.
Residents in its 14 partner cities (Cincinnati, Columbus, Louisville, Tulsa, Wichita, Nashville, Knoxville, Phoenix, Denver, Salt Lake City, ATL, Pittsburgh, Albuquerque, and Omaha) will have no problem finding both volunteer opportunities and experiences. Concerted also partners with artists and promoters to support tours around the U.S., like Mac Demarco and Bad Suns. As a native Californian, I was surprised that there weren’t any publicly available opportunities for cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Thankfully, Concerted partner Whitney announced in January that they’d be giving away tickets to select shows on their tour to support their new record, Small Talk. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Brooklyn, and more cities had the chance to participate, including me.
VOLUNTEERING WITH SERVE LA
Similar to their concert availability, there weren’t any immediate volunteer partners in Los Angeles yet. The good news is that you can self-source an eligible volunteer organization to work at. Once you finish your service, the volunteer organization just needs to scan a Concerted-provided QR code to confirm your hours before they show up in your account.
A quick Google search took me to L.A. Works, a database of nonprofits in Los Angeles county. I chose to work with Serve LA, a non-profit that serves free breakfast and dinner in East Hollywood every weekday to the public, no questions asked. They also provide free showers for the community every Tuesday and Thursday across the street.
I signed up to help prepare breakfast on a Friday morning. Valerie Varghese, Serve LA’s volunteer coordinator, requested I show up for service at 7 a.m. in clothes I didn’t mind getting dirty. I didn’t realize until I punched the address into my GPS that I’d be working out of a church called The Hope Center. Serve LA is a faith-based organization and weaves this into every service they provide. I was slightly nervous about going to a church for the first time in a while—like volunteering, I hadn’t been since high school. My bright pink hair, tattoos and piercings don’t leave a great impression on my Christian parents, so I made sure to show up in something modest and my hair tied back.
Something about the lead-up felt like the first day of school. I wanted to give a good impression; I wanted to do a good job, and hopefully connect with people with whom I didn’t know if I’d have anything in common with. When I showed up, I realized I didn’t have anything to be nervous about.
East Hollywood was still and crisp with cool morning air in the pre-9 a.m. hours. Walking up to the gate, Serve LA’s hospitality coordinator Marcus Bradley greeted me and gave me a quick tour. Two prep rooms, one for fresh food and one for putting plates together; The main kitchen, where a sweet older lady was cooking bacon and eggs; and the Manna room, a reference to the Book of Exodus in which God gave wandering Israelites manna to sustain them while wandering the desert for 40 years (something I vaguely remember learning during my time in Bible study when I was younger). Folks eat in the main room of the church, where other volunteers were rolling silverware in napkins.
For half of my shift, I worked in the first prep room, placing donated breads and pastries from grocery stores into storage bins. Then, I met three other volunteers to put a fruit salad together. The lead volunteer seemed like a regular at The Hope Center—even though he’s from Tennessee, everyone knows him by name and greets him first thing they walk in. The other two volunteers—one from San Jose, the other a native Angeleno—knew each other from a martial arts class and chose to volunteer together.
After a couple minutes, I realized that they were playing Absolutely by Dijon in full on the speakers. I told them they had good taste, which opened up a conversation of music while we worked. I didn’t mention Concerted to them, but I couldn’t help but imagine all of us working together to go to a show with each other.
My shift was just prep work, so I left before folks lined up for breakfast. However, The Hope Center keeps track of how many people they serve for breakfast and dinner everyday. The headcount is never under 100. The staff draws a little smiley face every time they exceed 150. Marcus told me I’m welcome back anytime; even if it wasn’t for Concerted, I would love to come back and serve plates to the folks who attend every day.
WHITNEY AND PREWN AT THE LODGE ROOM, HIGHLAND PARK
I went to Whitney’s first show in Los Angeles out of two sold-out dates at The Lodge Room. My photographer and I got there early to see Prewn, a band relatively new on our radar that we were excited to see. The crowd was frankly not prepared for how good they were. Hailing from Massachusetts, it was the band’s first time in Los Angeles. Lead singer Izzy Hagerup just moved to the city, and she proudly announced her mom was in the house that night. The band’s music is folky and complex, similar to Adrienne Lenker, but they do not shy away from shredding on their guitars live.
The coziness of the Lodge Room, on-theme with its warm wood panelling and twinkling chandeliers, was the perfect set up for Whitney. Soft and expansive, the band opened with the first song off Small Talk, “Silent Exchange.” They intertwined new songs with old, playing fan favorites like “Dandelion” and “Giving Up,” before closing with “The Falls.”
“We played the Fillmore in San Francisco last night,” said vocalist and drummer Julien Ehrlich about the 1,500 capacity room. “It’s tough to be intimate in a place like that. I’m glad to be here tonight.”
Tickets for the Lodge Room shows were about $40 each. I was able to cash in just two hours from volunteering for this show, which is the average amount of time for most concert tickets. It’s not bad for an indie band, especially with rising costs of tickets through Ticketmaster. Even though I worked for these tickets, it felt like I was there for free.
MY EXPERIENCE
Concerted is something I would have prayed for as a teenager. No one is really interested in hiring anyone under 18, and my parents weren't keen on lending me money for concerts. I remember scrounging up coins, cashing in bottles and cans to recycle, saving up my lunch money, and anything I could do if it meant getting $15 to see a local band. Besides that, larger indie bands seemed out of reach, and arena concerts were simply impossible.
Concerted doesn’t just offer tickets to independent artists and indie bands—I could see SZA, Chappell Roan, even Bad Bunny if the location allowed. In a time where Ticketmaster queues feel like a warzone and it seems like a battle of the wealthy, Concerted provides a great alternative to get a chance to see an artist you love without money getting in the way.
There’s also a rise in artists partnering with non-profits to raise awareness or do good. Pop stars like Olivia Rodrigo and Ariana Grande historically utilized their tours as ways to register young people to vote during election years. Local bands are throwing their own shows to donate to immigrant support foundations and Palestinian charities. The music community brings people together in more ways than one, and Concerted encourages the opposite end to bring positive change.
The platform helps solve two issues: One, people don’t need to spend an absurd amount of money to do something fun. Two, Concerted encourages people to give back to their communities. Lots of people talk about the chaos of the world, but can rarely get past a tweet or a doomscroll. With volunteer hours as your currency, your passion fuels your service. Whether it’s working with animals, serving people in your community, or putting your back into gardening or cleaning, there are infinite ways to positively impact your immediate community.
