Volunteer Management
The foundation of volunteer management is capturing the interests, skills, or spiritual gifts of people in your church. Collecting and recording this information helps you target communication, recruiting the most capable or interested in specific ministries.
Once set up, volunteer management provides an overview for recruiting, assigning or approving volunteers, creating and updating schedules, and tracking attendance and resources. Note that, depending on your denominational setup, you may see labels use "Serving" vs "Volunteer" and "Skills" vs "Talents". The software works the same regardless of the label.
Volunteer/Serving Teams do not serve the same purpose as groups, but they co-exist. See Groups and Volunteer/Serving Teams.
Getting Started
If you're getting started with volunteer management, we recommend that you follow these steps:
- List various teams who routinely serve and being adding them Realm.
- Among those teams, identify the usual roles (photographer, administrator, cook, teacher, etc.) and requirements for those roles (must be 18, must work with adult, requires background check, etc.)
- Ask everyone to help record or update their skills/talents and interests either on paper or via the mobile app, Connect App.
- Recruit new volunteers and develop a plan for communicating immediate or emergency needs.
- Approve/Assign volunteers.
- Assign serving teams to groups, if needed.
- Create and update schedules.
Resources for your Connect App Users
Team Leader Guides:
Serving/Volunteer Teams
A group is who gathers. A serving team is who makes it happen. Most ministries need both. Teams are organized members who have expressed a desire, skill, or gift for serving in a specific capacity, such as a hospitality, childcare, or meals. Teams
Serving/Volunteer Roles
If you've ever been a part of a successful team, you know that the best teams are usually made up of a few different roles. For example, a local missions team may benefit from a strong administrator, a photographer, a doctor, a carpenter, a painter, and a dozen people committed to prayer for the team and opportunities. When setting up serving roles, you'll be able to connect these roles with related skills and requirements, such as age or required background check. Roles
Skills/Talents & Interests
Skills/Talents and interests are associated with roles. Generate a handout to collect skills and interest on paper or post a form to the newsfeed. Once collected and recorded on each individual's profile, you can use the team's roster tab to view, recruit, manage, or approve volunteers. Each team also has a schedules tab where you can create a schedule for volunteers on that team based on their preferences. Skills/Talents & Interests