Let's Plan a Volunteer Recruitment Month! - The Basics of What a Recruiting Month "Looks" Like!

For a number of years I served as the Children's Director at a church in

Northern California. We needed 120 volunteers for our Sunday morning Children's Ministry and we typically held our volunteer recruitment drive during the month of August - which meant I spent a lot of time on the phone making those calls! When the new ministry year began in September, inevitably I still needed volunteers; so one year I decided to make a change and held our volunteer recruitment drive during the month of May; this was one of the best decisions I ever made!

I planned something special for each week of May . . . 

• The first week in May I showed a video of our classes and made a bulletin insert listing areas of need. This worked quite well as I had people tell me it looked like the kids and volunteers were actually having fun in their classes and generated a lot of conversations! 
• The second week we ran the insert again showing only the areas where a need remained and our Children's Pastor spoke about becoming involved. 
• The third week we had volunteers share why they served and ran the insert again. This also was very effective as the people in our church expected me and our Children's Pastor to say it was a great thing to serve in children's ministry - they didn't expect to hear from people like them how exciting it was and how they had been able to see God work in the lives of children! 
• The fourth week we ran the insert once again and had our Senior Pastor speak about the importance of our Children's Ministry. This proved to be very effective as well! When the Senior Pastor speaks to the value of serving in the children's ministry, people listen! Be sure your Senior Pastor is your biggest advocate - give him the book, "Transforming Children Into Spiritual Champions" by George Barna. 

The entire month we had banners and balloons around the church and all volunteers, Pastors and elders wore buttons with our recruiting theme. By the end of the month we only needed a few volunteers and we had the entire summer to fill those remaining spots - which we always did! By identifying all our volunteers in this way we were able to have training in July for everyone involved in our Children's Ministry - and were able to begin our Fall ministries with trained and enthusiastic volunteers!

These are the basics of what each week of a Volunteer Recruiting Month looks like. Tomorrow I'll give you the first of seven complete recruiting plans which you could use for your own volunteer recruiting month!