Last week in our Roundtable on Reports, we talked about different ways to use group reports.  If you're interested in more, here's the podcast.  It's Episode 13.

Typically, you probably think of group reports as enrollment rosters or group attendance.  Of course, those are important because they help you see how well the ministry is doing.  But, data can also be a life-saver for dealing with two challenges that every church faces during this season of the ministry year.  Let's personalize those and see how group reports can come to the rescue.

Six years ago we released an initial version of our volunteer scheduling feature.  It has been updated many times since then, but nothing like we are rolling out tonight.  Tonight's release of SERVICE VOLUNTEERS fills in the gaps to elevate this feature to the very top tier in the industry.

Our Volunteers feature lets you create a group and then schedule that team to serve.  With SERVICE VOLUNTEERS you create Templates made up of all the groups serving during a given service. 

Using the template you can schedule volunteers across all teams, see blocked out dates, potential conflicts, email or text everyone, and choose from 3 options for volunteers to get their own substitutes.

I remember from my church staff days that it was all hands on deck for Christmas Eve  services.  I see the staff at my church today all working together to cover volunteer spots for these services just like we did.  Because it is such a special time for families, I doubt  this stretch for volunteers on Christmas Eve will ever change.  But, we can help.

Eight weeks ago, I did a blog post on using Workflows to help you with volunteer recruitment.  This is the time of the year that most church staff are stressed out to make sure all the volunteers needed are in place.  But, once you get them recruited and trained, there is still the challenge of getting everyone scheduled.

Today's post is a follow-up to last week's on volunteer recruitment.  The two posts work in tandem, you really need to master both to get the process down.

Last time we saw the need for a Ministry Connection Central group that simplifies church-wide communication and then auto-registers responses for specific Ministry Connection follow-up.

We then saw how to use a specific Ministry Connection group to develop a follow-up system to move those interested in connecting to their next step of registering for training. The system automates communication to ensure we are doing due diligence as staff to honor their initial interest.

The church runs on volunteers. Pastors and staff are looking for help. Attenders and members are anxious to help. So, why is recruiting hard?

Every week or so staff get notified that people want to serve in their area of ministry. They send an email or leave a voice mail and if there's no response, they're on to next week's contacts. They don't have an adequate system or bandwidth to continue pursuing people.

Meanwhile attenders and members keep responding to the asks about their interests on Sunday and wonder why staff don't respond like promised. It could be that the email or voice message came in the middle of their work day, got put aside for later and then forgotten.

We recently gave some thought to how to solve this problem using the Churchteams system and Workflows. Here's what we came up.  See what you think.

The best place to connect with parents on Sunday morning is when they check-in their kids.  This is just as true for your members and regular attenders as it is for your guests.  You may already be using that time to start the follow-up process.  If not, see section D in the check-in view.  But, why not use the same opportunity to capture attendance for everything everyone in the family is attending or serving in that morning?  

In the last blog I shared ideas on how to best use our church database to recruit volunteers.  This is a huge effort for many church staff every late summer and early fall.  But, the rest of the year is about helping these volunteers thrive and succeed in their ministry.  Here are some ideas on how to use Churchteams to help you make sure your volunteers have as positive an experience as possible.