Many volunteers who come your way are highly capable people who just need a little training to know how to master the specific task you’re giving them.
A good heart just needs to be supplemented with a good skill set. Set aside an evening or a Saturday to properly train volunteers as they start serving, and then top up their training from time to time to help them get better at what they do.
6. Are you organized, or are you going to waste my time?
Disorganization is epidemic among church leaders and nonprofits.
Too many volunteers show up to do their job only to discover that they also have to do yours because, once again, you’ve dropped some balls.
The more organized you are (on time, prepared, other holes plugged), the more your volunteers will be able to excel at what you’ve asked them to do.
As I first outlined in this post, disorganization is one of the six reasons many leaders lose high capacity volunteers. Here are five more.
7. So, am I signing up for life?
In many churches, serving is like the Hotel California. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.
You’re a Christian for life, but that doesn’t mean you have to serve in one role for life. But many churches just assume people will.
What if you start putting a time line on every role? What if your conversation sounded more like:
Why don’t you try this for a season?
Can you serve with us for this semester/year?
People in this position typically serve for a three-year term. You can try it out for a month before you commit to that term.
We definitely have some long-term serving roles at Connexus (for example, we ask our high school small group leader to serve for four years), but we’re clear on the term from the outset.
Most other roles can easily be shortened to a few months to a year.
If you start providing end dates for roles, you’ll notice something surprising. Many people stay after their term has ended. They sign up for more.
Surprisingly, when you give volunteers an out, many lean in.
Want More?
In churches and nonprofit world, leading and managing volunteers is one of the most important tasks you’ll have.
If you’re looking for more tangible resources, my friends at Volunteer Rocket will help take you in depth. It’s a year’s worth of resources to help you gain, train and retain volunteers that can help you completely change your volunteer culture. And they have a free seven-day trial on now.
And if you work in pre-school or children’s ministry, Live to Serve with Adam Duckworth and Sue Miller is a new, practical, hands-on training day for you as a leader that’s coming to four cities in 2015.
Hope this helps!
So what would you add to this list?
What questions do you ask when you volunteer somewhere? What other unarticulated questions do you think volunteers are asking?
