In any church, volunteers handle a wide variety of tasks to keep services running smoothly. Keeping track of these volunteers for weekly church services, fundraisers, and other special events can feel like a full-time job. If you’re still living in the sticky note and spreadsheet era of volunteer management, it’s time to leverage volunteer scheduling tools to make life easier.
These 5 Volunteer Scheduling tools will provide the ability to easily:
- Manage volunteer sign ups and schedules
- Create a member database
- Coordinate event registration
- Message groups
- Collect donations
- Save you time
Check out these volunteer scheduling tools:
SignUp.com
A simple, user-friendly tool, SignUp.com allows volunteers to sign up for specific duties on specific days. It even has a filter feature, making it easy to see what shifts and positions are open for certain events. If you’re looking for a “no-frills’ way to keep track of volunteers, this is the tool for you.
Price: SignUp.com is relatively inexpensive compared to other volunteer scheduling software. In the Basic, free version, SignUp offers several features. These include unlimited emails and participants, simple shift swap, email delivery tracking and reminding, social media sharing, and more. If you need something with more capabilities, the software also offers Starter ($9.99/month), Plus ($24.99/month), Max ($49.99/month), and Campus ($99/year) plans. These come with unique functions like waiver uploads, increased organizer options, and custom URLs. Check out its packages for more details on what each plan can offer you.
Planning Center
Planning Center was designed with worship services in mind. This is a comprehensive church management software that allows you to plan and schedule all ministry activities in one space. You can even create a member database, manage member giving, and attach service rehearsal documents. It also allows you to upload detailed plans for each service, from what songs will be played to who the bandmates will be that day. You can use the Services feature to handle volunteer scheduling or leverage it with other features of the Planning Center system.
Price: Planning Center comes with a 30-day free trial but no free version. Its pricing, which ranges from $14/month to $199/month, is based upon the number of team members who will be accessing the system. See the plans here to learn more.
Churchteams
Churchteams is a full software suite. It helps you manage membership, groups, volunteers, event registration, contributions, email marketing, reporting, and other important data. One unique component of Churchteams is its Text-to-Church feature. This allows guests, members, volunteers, and church staff to directly interact with the database through texting. This software is leading the pack in workflow automation as well. It works to identify and map out workflows to help you automate your systems and procedures for consistent communication and follow ups with church members and guests.
Price: Like Planning Center, pricing for Churchteams is based on the volume of team members using it. They offer a free 30-day trial but after that packages begin at $37/month and go up to $297/month. More details on their various plans can be found here.
VolunteerMark
VolunteerMark has a streamlined approach to recruitment, donations, scheduling, tracking, and communicating. The cloud-based software helps volunteers track commitments through a personalized dashboard. There, they can manage their events, reschedule, and communicate with volunteer leaders. You can create one-time events with unlimited shifts or create schedules as fixed or flexible based on need. There are a lot of possibilities for volunteer management with this intuitive program.
Price: In addition to a free trial for its more advanced packages, VolunteerMark also offers a free version. The free version allows you up to 50 users and three events per month. Pricing ranges from $34/month for its Basic package and goes up to $125/month for the Royale package. See the differences in features here.
SignUpGenius
SignUpGenius boasts an impressive 18 million users every month. With its user-friendly interface, it’s easy to see why. SignUpGenius makes it simple to create sign ups, message groups, report accurately, and donate with a payment feature. The latter even allows you to track payment history and export into Excel for bookkeeping purposes.
Price: There is a Basic plan through SignUpGenius that is free for small groups. More comprehensive packages include the Silver ($8.99/month), Gold ($22.49), and Platinum ($44.99) options. As the most inexpensive volunteer sign-up software on our list, SignUpGenius is a popular choice for both personal and professional functions.
Bonus Volunteer Scheduling Tool Option: Your Church Management Software
Ask whether the church management software (ChMS) your church uses has a volunteer scheduling option built-in. Many do, so this is a quick and cheap (since you’re already paying for it), way to implement an online volunteer scheduling process.
