February 03, 2021
Volunteers in Ministry: How to Handle More Effectively
Volunteers can be a very valuable addition to your ministry team. But they can also unknowingly be adding harm to the ministry. Below is a taste of our course on “Hiring, Motivating, and Releasing Staff – Paid or Volunteer” where we go over how to handle these situations. How to either prevent potential issues from starting, or where to go next after they have hit.
View our posts on MM Volunteer Days here.
Hiring Volunteers
We go into detail in our Training workshop of the below steps which we call the Hiring Pyramid:
- Set clear goals.
- Formulate the right job description.
- Recruit the right people.
- Develop effective interview questions.
- Prayerfully access the candidates.
- Make a qualified offer.
The goals are the same for both volunteers and paid staff. It may seem to be a little overkill for a volunteer position, but like we’ve already mentioned, volunteers can have just as much of an impact on the organization, so these steps are vital for all positions.
Motivating Volunteers
Another step you don’t want to miss, motivating your staff: paid and volunteer. While everyone has different motivations, generally speaking, people want to:
- Know and be known.
- Understand and be understood.
- Celebrate and be celebrated.
- You don’t cut your way into greatness (don’t be cheap!)
- Analysts know the costs, leaders understand value.
- It’s not the act of appreciation; it’s the appreciation behind the act!
View our Training + Culture Pinterest board with some fun ideas. You can also find posts on our blog of different ways MM has added fun to our office culture.
While the list above works for both paid and volunteer positions, in our training class we also mention specific examples just for volunteers. A few of those include:
- Have work available right away, and not just busy work.
- Appoint a good, organized leader to each “committee” to avoid frustration.
- Make them feel a part of the organization.
- Write thank you notes.
- Have an annual or semi-annual recognition time; whether it’s a lunch, dinner, or something else creative.
Releasing Volunteers
When you have set clear job descriptions and clear expectations and goals, the most logical next step is ongoing verbal feedback. Then whenever an issue comes up, the first step would be during one of the verbal feedback times include the issue without documentation. As we learned in The Ideal Team Player book, this step may have several reminders.
If the issue is not resolved, during another feedback time the issue should be brought up again and included in the documentation this time. If the situation warrants, consider a probation period next, if the issue has yet to be resolved. Once the probation period is over and the issue continues to go unsolved, termination is the final step.
If these steps seems a bit overwhelming, don’t give up! We provide guided steps in our workbook including templates for each of these sections to help your organization succeed.
Continue the Conversation
We hope this has been helpful in answering some basic questions on volunteers in your ministry. If you would like to dive deeper into this conversation of acquiring and releasing volunteers, we have a training along with several templates on this topic.
We’ve also provided a few other resources we found surrounding the general topic of Human Resources:
- “How to Hire, Motivate, and Release Staff – Paid or Volunteer” from the MM Training division
- “What Volunteers Expect” from Smart Church Management
- Tax, Payroll and HR Trends Blog from Clergy Financial Resources
- Church Paperwork blogs from Church Planting Tactics
- Human Resources for Nonprofits from The Center for Nonprofit Resources
- Trusted Partners in the Human Relations field
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