I believe the best way to grow a volunteer team is personal, one-on-one invites. I encourage our staff to invite people week in and week out. And we see people join the team on a weekly basis. Just think...if you get 1 person to join the team each week, you will have 52 more volunteers this time next year. I call that volunteer addition.
But...what if all of your current volunteers started asking their friends, family, and connections to join the team? What if they got fired up about seeing other people get involved in reaching kids and families? What if you challenged them to spread the word about how awesome it is to serve in children's ministry?
If that happened, you would not just see volunteer addition...you would see volunteer multiplication. Instead of 1 person a week joining the team, it could be 4-5 people a week joining the team. You would have 200-250 more volunteers this time next year.
Last year we encouraged our volunteers to reach out to their family, friends, and connections and ask them to join the team. They responded and we saw volunteer multiplication. In fact, one volunteer personally enlisted over 80 new people to join the team.
This year we decided to amp it up. To encourage our volunteers to invite people to join the team, we are giving away an iTouch each quarter to the volunteer who enlists the most people to join the team. Here is the front and back of invite card we made up that they can use to invite people to join the team.
In addition, at the end of the year, we are going to give away an iPad to the volunteer who enlisted the most people to join the team.
We are surrounded by children and families who don't know Jesus. It's going to take volunteer multiplication to reach them. Let's ask God to not just add to our teams, but to multiply them.
Posted by Dale Hudson
