If your church is growing (and we pray it is!), then you’re always going to need more volunteers to help move your ministry forward. And the best place to find those new volunteers is hiding in plain sight—amongst your current volunteers.
By encouraging your current volunteers to be the leaders in your volunteer recruitment and retention efforts, you’ll free up your staff to focus on other ministry commitments and see an increase in the momentum and enthusiasm of your church volunteer efforts.
If that sounds like an attractive proposition to you, we’ve got three steps you can start taking today to help your volunteers start replacing and replicating themselves:
1. Make it a responsibility.
For your staff members who oversee volunteers, make training volunteers in recruitment part of their job descriptions and include it in their employment review process. You may think they know that’s part of their role, but it never hurts to make it explicit by putting it in an official job description.
2. Make it a priority.
When your volunteers come on board, or when you’re having a training or touch-base conversation with them, make sure they know that recruiting new volunteers is an important part of the role they’re taking on. Provide them with messaging and guidance to help make the idea of recruitment more accessible and appealing.
3. Make it repeatable.
Volunteers don’t just materialize out of thin air. Determine what your criteria is for volunteers in each ministry—things like experience, spiritual gifts, availability, etc.—and record it. Develop and share communication tools with your current volunteers that they can then share with their networks.
By involving your current volunteers in your recruitment and retention efforts, you not only empower your staff to focus more fully on their responsibilities.
You also empower and inspire your current volunteers to take up the banner for your ministries and increase the potential for lives changed—both inside and outside your church.
How are you helping your volunteers recruit? What steps are you taking?