Recruiting & Organizing Volunteers

Somehow I feel like we ended up with a culture where children are treated like celebrity divas while their parents are doing 100% of the labor required to put on shows & sports games and also pay scads of money and are required to volunteer.

Meanwhile the leaders and coaches are pulling their hair out to get parents to contribute, taking away from the leaders’ ability to focus on leading! Is this really the best model for raising healthy and productive kids?  

Before you develop your volunteer process you need to decide what the goals are for your club by creating a mission statement. If you don’t have a clear goal for what you want your group to achieve, you won’t get there, because you don’t even know where you are headed.

Start by emptying your mind into a typed document with all your hopes & dreams for your club. Trim it until you have a 3 sentence mission statement. Make sure everyone in your group knows those goals. This might mean you will have to have a meeting or produce new documentation to reestablish goals and that’s ok. As a leader, you need to have goals that are actually attainable, that you can fully support and that are clear enough to give you the strength to say “no” to anything that will be a waste of your time as the leader.   

Here is the conundrum. I have students in front of me as I lead. I’m leading for their benefit. My goals are intended for the students, not the parents. But the parents are the laborers I need to make the group work. But the parents are not there when I’m leading. The kids are.   

Too often the kids in a club are not even presented with ways they can become leaders and take ownership of their own club. So they enjoy the club and go home and play video games while the club leaders spend free time begging their parents to read memos and volunteer.  

So here is what I did…  Make an exhaustive list of everything you do for your club/team and everything that needs done by someone. It will take an entire year to get this list perfected because most clubs have “in season” and “off season” work to be done, including thighs that only the head coach does. The truth is, you should want your club to be reproducible and sustainable without you. Be loving enough to share this awesome club you are providing, or maybe your process could even be monetized for you if you make a leading guide for others?

Take this list of jobs and give each job a title, a complete job description, a list of any resources needed to do the job well, a timeline/deadline for when that job should be performed/completed, and indicate if it’s an adult only job, student/kid only job, student & adult together job, or coach only job so people know what they can pick based on their age. Leave the “coach only” jobs in there so people know and appreciate all the work you put in as the leader.

Then take your document with jobs and take out as many words as humanly possible. Commas and run-on sentences will be your friend here. The shorter these descriptions, the more likely people are to read them.  Make that list of jobs into a single document with and awesome title and a correlating “Sign Up” document.

(For my club we have the Jobs* document and a Student Questionnaire) Read the jobs at a meeting with your students and have them sign up at a meeting with you and have a meeting with their guardians so they sign up as well.

Make a post about vacant job spots and after all that, be confident enough to let some jobs go vacant and let guardians know your club will not be providing those aspects of the club at this time. This might mean a consequence of higher participation fees if for example you have fundraiser spots that remain vacant. That's ok!   

To inspire kids to take jobs, which would mean less work for the leaders This gives students the opportunity to become leaders of small areas in a safe space. It’s supposed to be educational for the students to not only lead, but also come up with other ways they could use their talents, or so they can try something they want to learn in a safe space where perfectionism isn’t a goal.  It’s showing the students that it takes a lot of work to put together a ministry or a club so they learn to not just be consumers It hopefully inspires them to appreciate what other people do, and provide for the body of Christ and for things they participate in. It’s also an opportunity for parents to get involved with their kids to talk about what their student is good at and interact with each other as their student works to fulfill their job. It provides an opportunity for parents to give blessings to their child and discuss things their student is good at beyond music, art & drama.  

Once your students & guardians have picked jobs, find a way to attach those jobs to either their profile on your clubs app, on name tags worn at your club, in the attendance roster, or any kind of organization process you have. Also post a master list of who took what jobs on your app and email it. This way everyone is reminded of what they committed to and others know who is responsible for all the jobs, hopefully providing a way to bypass you as a leader a bit when trying to get things done.   

Build in a time at practices or events to address jobs. I have an announcements portion of meetings with my entire group and save the last 20 minutes of each meeting for one-on-one time at my drama club for addressing jobs.  

This is why I think this “jobs” process is working… because the kids are excited to take small leadership roles or support their leader and it creates a reason for parents and kids to accomplish something together instead of each person doing their own part, ALONE. It’s a chance for child/parent bonding (instead of leader/parent frustration). It creates a greater sense of ownership & value for everyone involved. As a coach you will have to be satisfied if things do not get accomplished in the style or timeframe you would have done it in, but many times others will actually do a better job than you would have done, and you are freed up to do the jobs that only the leader can do.  

If a child is part of a basketball team and our only goal is to teach basketball, we have denied them the opportunity to also learn leadership skills, relationship skills, to develop spiritually and emotionally. Let’s do more than just teach them basketball!  

So does all of this completely work and make perfect clubs? Of course not. Humans are difficult :) I wish that everyone had to do a 3 month stint as a restaurant server, retail worker during Christmas time, and be the head leader of a large group of people. We are all on a journey and we need to love people where they are at, just like our Heavenly Father does for us as people and leaders. Good leaders are willing to change, and willing to be confident. Surround yourself with people who will help you become a better leader as you take on the task of leadership.

~Coach Baldwin