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When Dave Reynolds moved with his wife, Paula, to her hometown of Gilroy 18 years ago, he didn’t know anything about the garlic festival.
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The very next year he started volunteering at the garlic festival and hasn’t stopped since.
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“I’ve always been involved with community. So, I volunteered and my wife volunteered and we were making garlic bread and working in Gourmet Alley,” says Reynolds.
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Over the years, Reynolds, 41, has taken on more responsibility—from picking up trash for the Gilroy Gators to serving as chairman running Gourmet Alley, an acre within the park dedicated to the event’s main attraction—food. With 2,000 volunteers—50 percent of all the volunteers in the festival—that’s no simple feat.
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This degree of responsibility is nothing new for Reynolds, who works for JP Morgan Chase managing securities trading from San Luis Obispo to Sunnyvale.
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“My skill set in running businesses and running organizations fits in perfectly with running the garlic festival,” Reynolds says. “We’ve looked at these challenges, of busing expenses that have exploded and just running an entirely volunteer-run organization as efficiently as possible, so we can save money everywhere we can.”
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Reynolds says he’s worked to advance the long-term strategic planning of the garlic festival. Now in its 37th year, Reynolds is focused on getting the festival to year 40 and beyond. He’s been analyzing budgets and cash flow data of the last 10-15 years to uncover opportunities and strategize on how the 25 different festival committees can operate more effectively. Reynolds has been working 15-20 hours a week since November finding new revenue streams, and concentrating on building and growing sponsorship. This is all to further the community-service mission of the garlic festival, which distributes its proceeds among 125 different charities.
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Reynolds says he’s always loved Gilroy and wants to help it be even better.
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“The garlic festival brings the whole entire community together at one main event for the city to raise money,” Reynolds says. “The garlic festival is just a monster in size with 4,000 local volunteers working—just giving up their time and energy for the collective good of all of these different groups. That to me is just amazing.”
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Reynolds says he likes seeing what can happen when people work together and donate their time. He and wife Paula have worked to instill this sense of community in their daughters Bridget, 11, Abby, 13, and Isabelle, 15.
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“Having them see in this world that it’s important to volunteer and give back to your community—that should be one of the first things that you’re doing, working for your neighbor, working for your friend and trying to help build community,” he says, “because it’s where we live and the only thing we’re going to have down the road is each other.”
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Reynolds says the key to a successful garlic festival is the volunteers.
“The volunteers basically are what the secret sauce of the festival is. We do it just for the love of garlic, the love of Gilroy and the growth of our community.”
