Most churches have volunteers who serve at weekly services in various capacities. Volunteer greeters, ushers, childcare workers, and more make weekly services happen. One area that tends to be overlooked when it comes to volunteers is administration. We don’t often consider administration as an area where volunteers could serve. However, this could be a great fit for members of the congregation who prefer to help behind the scenes.
In addition to offering a way for more people to participate in the work of ministry, these volunteers can also reduce the administration workload for your team. The key is to make a clear path to show potential volunteers how they can contribute, and invite them to get started.
Here are a few tips to building a church volunteer administration team:
Tip #1: Decide what administrative tasks to delegate to volunteers
It doesn’t make sense to start recruiting people until you know what tasks you’d want them to handle.
If you’re not sure where to start, here are some potential options:
- Cleaning up the church database
- Stuffing envelopes
- Folding bulletins
- Sending follow-up cards to first-time guests
- Writing or editing the church bulletin
- Helping with project management efforts
- Scanning documents
- Filing paperwork
Consider tasks you could delegate to volunteers that would free up your time to handle other projects.
Tip #2: Document each task
You don’t want even the most talented volunteers to make it up as they go along. The next time you perform a task you’d like to hand off to a volunteer, document each step of the process. This will make training volunteers easier and will greatly reduce the number of mistakes you’d have to fix later.
Tip #3: Invite people to volunteer
Start by finding detail-oriented, organized individuals who have a background in administrative type work. Someone who has experience as an administrative assistant, a bookkeeper, or in general office work might be a great fit.
When you’re ready to start recruiting, one-on-one invitations will probably work better than a general invite from the stage. Spread the word with small group leaders and other volunteers at your church to see if they know someone who would enjoy and be good at administrative work.
Tip #4: Provide training and get them started
Once you have people signing up, use the documentation you created and train each volunteer. Find out how often and when they can serve. Provide a variety of scheduling options such as:
- During normal office hours at the church
- During a church service they don’t normally attend
- At-home (just use discretion about sending any documentation home with someone)
Set a schedule so they know when you need certain tasks completed.
Establishing a volunteer administrative team requires some creativity in scheduling, knowing what you can delegate, plus detailed documentation. While it does mean you’ll have some extra work to do initially, a strong volunteer administration team can save you a great deal of time in the long run.
