My wife was excited to begin volunteering at a local homeless gospel mission near our home. With a bachelor’s degree in Human Development and a master’s degree in Social Work she was eager to use some of her skills to counsel, encourage, and support clients of the gospel mission. However, after my wife had explained her professional experience and ideal area for volunteering to the volunteer coordinator, she was placed in the waiting room of the gospel mission where she was supposed to “hang out” with clients and talk to them. Every time she showed up she was expected to randomly walk up to clients who were waiting to receive services and talk to them.
Do you think my wife volunteered for a long time? Of course not! She left two weeks after she realized this gospel mission was not using her skills or experience in a way to help clients.
Most of the time people are willing to jump in and help a good cause even if the work is something that is uninteresting to them. However, if you want to have volunteers stay and serve for a long period of time you have to put them in areas they are passionate and skilled.
Passions: What Volunteers Want to Do
You can find volunteers passion either by the ministries in which the volunteers serve or the task which the volunteers do.
My guess is that your church has many ministries that potential volunteers are passionate about.
For example, as an associate pastor I oversaw many ministry areas. I was in charge of small group ministries, greeters, communion servers, men’s ministry, money count after Sunday services, facility maintenance, women’s ministries, and janitorial services for our buildings. There were plenty of areas for service based on someone’s area of passion.
In addition to individual ministries which volunteers might be passionate about, you also can find tasks that volunteers are passionate about. For example, some volunteers might be introverted and love to work quietly at a desk. For these people they are happy to work folding bulletins, organizing the church food pantry, collating teaching materials, organizing clothes for a clothing ministry, etc. Other volunteers might be extroverted and only want to do ministry that has interaction with people. These volunteers want to answer the phone, serve as greeters on Sundays, make care visits to the hospital, and follow up with prayer requests by telephone. In this manner you can match volunteers with tasks they are passionate about.
Research shows that volunteers who serve in roles that match their passion for serving derive more satisfaction and enjoyment from their service. They also are more likely to continue serving.[1]
Skills: What Volunteers Are Good at Doing
In addition to placing volunteers where they are passionate, you also need to discover what they are good at.
There are two ways to discover this. One is the use of formal assessments. There are assessments available such as Maximizing Your Effectiveness by Aubrey Malphurs, Now, Discover Your Strengths, by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton, and Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath.
Sometimes assessments can be a barrier to getting volunteers involved in ministry. Several articles in nonprofit management and leadership journals reveal nonprofit organizations have more success by limiting the assessments of their volunteers in the initial offer to volunteer.
For example, parks and recreation organizations along with forestry and wildlife organizations have found that their volunteers are most successful when they simply allow the volunteers to go out and work instead of stopping the volunteers to complete assessments, do trainings, etc.
Don’t let assessments get in the way of your volunteers doing work. Sometimes you don’t need to assess the strengths and passion of your volunteers. Sometimes you just need volunteers to do a task which the volunteers already know how to do.
A second way to assess volunteer strengths is to talk about it. In addition to formal assessments to discover what volunteers are passionate about and good at, you can also talk with volunteers to discover what they are good at.
Help volunteers identify where they might excel. When volunteers come to you they might not know what volunteer job they want to do. Furthermore, the volunteers might not even know what they are good at. Your job as the leader of volunteers is to help those volunteers discover what they are good at.
If possible, finds ways to match volunteers skills with their passions.
Don’t Go Too Far
Like most things in life, too much of a good thing can be bad. This idea of matching volunteers’ passions and skills can cause problems if it is too strict.
Someone has to take out the trash. Someone has to type numbers into an excel spreadsheet. Someone has to unclog the toilet during services on Sundays. Someone has to fold flyers and letters for the mail.
You will not be able to match the passions and skills of every volunteer perfectly. But, your job as the leader of volunteers is to do your best to discover the passions and strengths of your volunteers and to place volunteers in the positions that best matches those passions and strengths.
[1] See Clary, E. Gil, Mark Snyder, Robert Ridge, John Copeland, Arthur Stukas, Julie Haugen, and Peter Miene. “Understanding and Assessing the Motivations of Volunteers: A Functional Approach.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74, no. 6 (1998): 1516-1530.