People typically think of solving the problem of scheduling when they consider software for volunteers.  In this third and final post of this series on volunteers, we’re going to focus specifically on this, most complex , step of the volunteer system.

The best way to solve a problem is to define it.  Here are the seven problems and how scheduling software solves them.  It’s actually pretty complex.

Generally, staff are the catalysts and budgets are the fuel for ministry. It doesn’t matter whether a church has a lot of these or not, it takes volunteers to make church happen.

But, there has to be a deeper calling to volunteer than just making church happen. Like stewardship, volunteering or serving is a matter of discipleship. It is an important part of becoming more and more like Christ.

It's the middle of July.  If you are church staff and have already been on your summer vacation, then my guess is you're beginning to stress about recruiting volunteers for the fall ministry season.  Am I right?

You've spent significant time and energy to find, recruit, interview, verify, train, schedule, and track volunteers.  But, there is one last, and maybe most important, part of the volunteer process - caring for them.

On Saturday, boot tracks in the snow will mean only one thing.  Santa Claus has dropped off gifts meant to bring joy to you and your family.

The time your volunteers spend serving is a gift to your church.  But, it's also a reflection of the spiritual gifts God gave them.  That word in Greek is charisma. 

If you've ever done it or had a spouse who has done it, you know that scheduling volunteers to serve on a consistent basis on Sundays is a complex and often grueling task.  It can often mean Saturday night or even Sunday morning phone calls from someone you were counting on who needs to back out.  And you have to find a replacement.  This is stressful for everyone involved.

Last month I started this series on how to organize and build an effective volunteer system within Churchteams from start to finish.  As a reminder, here are the seven parts of this system.

So far we've looked at how to use church software to recruit and interview potential volunteers.  Once you've determined that someone is a good fit for ministry, it is time to verify your assumptions by doing a background check.

Background checks are pretty normal for churches and I've observed how churches have gone from doing them just for children's ministry to doing them for almost all volunteers.  It's a great idea just to be sure you do your due diligence to make sure your volunteers are safe.

This is the third in a series of blog posts on everything related to volunteers.  In the last one we talked about different ways of identifying and recruiting volunteers directly and indirectly.

In all four approaches (direct registration, indirect registration, direct reports, indirect reports), we ended up with a group or "pool" of potential volunteers.

The next step in the process is to interview these people.  The purpose of the interview is threefold:

Everything related to volunteers starts by creating a pool.  This is the gathering place from which a volunteer pipeline flows. 

You might refer to it as a list of potential volunteers that you create before starting to recruit.  If you would have asked me at one point in my ministry what it is, I would have called it the directory.  The directory is still a pretty common tool for recruiting volunteers.  So are sticky notes.  But there is a better way.