6 Essential Steps for Onboarding Volunteers

Nov 17

two women looking at a computer 6 steps for onboarding volunteers — Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

There is one group of people that churches cannot survive without. They are faithful, dedicated to the vision, and serve others. I’m talking, of course, about volunteers. If you have a great volunteer culture, life can be so much easier. However, if your volunteer culture is abysmal, you’ll burn yourself out quick. You can’t be in two places at once. I know. I tried.

One of the best things you can do to create a healthy volunteer culture is to have a quality onboarding process. The process answers the questions,

Where do new volunteers come from?
How do they start?
What will they do?
How will they be trained?
Who will train them?

While this post can’t answer all those questions for you, I can share with you how I’ve answered them in my context and the tools I’ve used to facilitate the answers. At the end of the post, I’ll have an opportunity for you to download for free all the tools I mention here.

So, here’s 6 steps to my volunteer onboarding process.

1. Recruitment Funnel

You can’t recruit new volunteers if there aren’t any new people. Not having enough volunteers is a continual problem no matter how big your church is. However, you need to have a strategy for bringing in new volunteers on a regular basis. Kidmin Guru Jim Wideman once told me that

“Every week you’re not recruiting is a week you’re further behind getting the right people you need.”

He lives that mantra and he’s the only kidmin pastor I’ve met that didn’t have a shortage of volunteers.

So how do you find these new people? There are lots of places to look, but I mainly use three systems to bring them in.

Relationships

Your best recruiting tool is building relationships. That’s why I use these 4 pools to look for volunteers. In each pool, I can look for and identify a potential volunteer and make the personal ask for them to join my team. They can say no or ignore a social media post, email, and even a stage announcement from the pastor. But it’s so much harder when you’re looking them in the eye.

Growth Track

Growth Track at many of my churches is the assimilation process for moving guests to members who serve and attend groups. Depending on the health of your church, this ministry regularly has new people looking for a place to get plugged in. When I was a kid’s pastor, I made great efforts to meet these people and make my case for kidmin. Many times, I taught one of the classes, which helped my recruiting all the more.

As great as Growth Track is, you can’t rely on the system to always send you new, ready-made volunteers. I always found more success inviting potential volunteers to attend the class and then adding them to my team than waiting for the perfect person to appear.

Annual Volunteer Drive

There is always a large percentage of people in your church who aren’t serving anywhere. So, a lot of churches do an annual volunteer drive, frequently a month or two before Easter or right before the school year begins. These are great for motivating the people who just sit in the pews to get involved. On these days, it’s important you have your ministry well represented in the positions you’re looking for and the need they’ll meet.

A big mistake I’ve seen leaders make over and over with these kinds of drives is to not have the rest of their onboarding process in place. They get a list of prospective new recruits and then do nothing with it. I would argue that the follow-up on the volunteer drive is the most important part. Getting a list of names is not enough. You have to do something.

2. Application and Background check

No matter what ministry you lead, you need to have some kind of application for serving. If nothing else than to get the potential volunteer’s contact information.

In addition, if the volunteer has anything to do with minors you need to run a background check. Most of the time there won’t be anything that pops up, but when it does, you’ll be protected. There are a lot of great services out there that can do it inexpensively. I’ve used Protect My Ministry and Checkr and never had a problem with either. A lot of times these companies will integrate with your church management system helping you send out requests and keep track of who’s been checked and when.

Contact information is all well and good and most likely you already have most of it before they started the app. However, there are other questions you can and should ask. I like to ask where they’d like to serve, their salvation and baptism story, and their involvement in the church. These questions help me guide our follow up conversation to get them plugged into the right place and help them take their next step on their discipleship journey.

You can get my volunteer application here.

3. Observation

Many of my new volunteers, especially ones in kidmin and youth have no idea what actually happens in a typical service. They may have expressed interest in a particular age group, but they may not know exactly where and how they can serve. This is why after I’ve reviewed the application and the background check, their next step is to come and watch.

I don’t ask them to do anything, yet, but if they want to serve in check-in, the sound booth, or in small group, I’ll have them shadow that position for the day.

After the service, I talk with them about the experience and ask if any particular job piqued their interest. The key here is that they’re not making a lifetime commitment. We’re just going to try something out and if it doesn’t fit, then we’ll try something else. My main goal is for them to serve in their gifts and passions. Sometimes that takes a little experimentation, and observation is the first step.

4. Policy Manual and Job Description

At the end of the observation conversation, I’ll hand the volunteer my policy manual and job descriptions. If they expressed interest in one particular position, I’ll highlight that one in the packet. Then I give them a week and ask them to review it and turned a signed copy back to me in a week.

If I have a lot of volunteers come in at once, I’ll hold a volunteer training where I’ll personally go through the policy manual to make sure they know and understand what’s expected of them. I have used Ministry Grid and heard that Right Now Media allows you to upload video training your volunteers can go through on their own. I’ve had limited success using this, but I know for a lot of churches it has worked well.

You can get a copy of my policy manual here and my volunteer job description templates here.

5. Mentoring

Now that we’ve handled the basic training of setting expectations and the flow of serving, it’s time for the new volunteer to get specific training. If you’ve been around someone who just joined the military, you know that basic training is only the first step. There is always more advanced training the soldier has to attend to teach them exactly how to do their job.

You need to do the same. Don’t put a brand-new volunteer in a room and throw a book at them. For the first 3-4 times they serve, pair them with a more experienced volunteer in the area, even if that person is you. Your volunteer will be far more successful and happier and as a result, stay longer if they know what they’re doing.

After each time they serve, talk with them, and find out what they’re struggling with and what they can do to combat it. These first few weeks are crucial to their success. They need to know that they’re cared for, and they can go to someone with questions and problems.

If you need a model to follow, here’s 5 basic steps.

I do. You watch.
I do. You help.
You do. I help.
You do. I watch.
You do. Someone else watches.

6. Deployment

We’ve reached the final step. You’ve recruited, trained, and mentored a brand-new volunteer. Most likely this process from start to finish took 2-3 months, but now you have someone who is serving in their gifts and passions and knows what they’re doing. They’ll serve you for a season and maybe train others who were just like them.

The best compliment you can receive for your volunteer culture is when a volunteer recruits for you. They love serving with you and in your ministry so much that they bring others with them. When this happens, the recruitment burden isn’t all on you. It’s a glorious feeling.

There are a lot of elements to a health volunteer culture. I talk about different elements here, here, and here. But maybe the most important is your onboarding process. How a volunteer starts sets the tone for the rest of the time you serve with them. Do what you can to make it clear, smooth, and enjoyable.

If you need help getting your process up and running, download my tools for volunteer onboarding below.