6 Things Killing Volunteer Recruitment in Churches

Does your church need to recruit more volunteers?

If so, you’re not alone. Recruiting volunteers is almost always a need for every church. In addition, I would argue that recruiting volunteers is harder now than it was just four years ago. 

But it’s not impossible. Your ministry and your church CAN have enough volunteers to run well. Will you ever have 100% and never need to recruit again? 

Of course not. 

The job of recruiting never ends, and having 90-95% of the volunteers you need is possible. With a team that’s almost fully staffed, your ministries can thrive, and it frees you up to spend more time working on it than you do in it. 

From my experience in my church and helping thousands of other church leaders recruit volunteers, here are 6 things I see that are killing volunteer recruitment in churches. 

Not Putting in the Time

The most important thing that will kill volunteer recruitment efforts is simply not spending enough time each week recruiting volunteers. Whenever I ask church leaders how many hours a week they spend recruiting volunteers, the most common answer is zero. 

Some leaders will say one hour, and a small number will say two or more hours, but over 80% routinely say they don't spend any time recruiting each week. 

Recruiting volunteers isn't impossible, but it's not magic either. It takes consistent effort week in and week out, following a plan.

Recruiting Without a Strategy

If you're like me, you may have been leading in a ministry role without ever learning to recruit volunteers. You might have even pursued a ministry degree in college and still didn't learn one of the most important skills every church leader needs. 

You can probably use dozens of different tactics to recruit volunteers, but a comprehensive strategy is a must if you want to recruit all the volunteers you need. 

As you build a strategy, answering these questions will help:

• How many volunteers do you need to recruit?
• How many people in your church aren’t currently serving anywhere?
• Who will you contact about serving? 
• What will you say to them to help them consider serving?
• What is a next step they can take to explore it without committing? 
• How will we onboard new volunteers without losing any in the process?

Rather than build your own strategy from scratch, you can follow the 5 Steps to Recruit Volunteers plan that we have here, available for free.

Asking Too Much Too Soon

Something else that can kill volunteer recruitment is asking for too big of a commitment too soon. But that might not mean what you think. 

For example, most volunteer roles in our children’s and student ministries are weekly small group leader roles. It’s a big commitment. Anywhere from 2-4 hours/week with a significant responsibility. 

It’s perfectly fine to ask someone for a big commitment, just not directly. 

A better approach is inviting them to a conversation and seeing if they say yes. Then, have the conversation and invite them to a volunteer tour and see if they say yes to that. At the tour, cast a vision for why they should serve and the difference they can make, then invite them to serve.

Don’t ask for too much too soon. Add smaller steps along the way to make it easier for them to say “yes” at each step. 

Losing People in Onboarding

This was a little surprising to me at first, but it’s become more common for me to talk with church leaders who lose a lot of potential volunteers in the onboarding process. Not because they were disqualified for any reason but because they simply get lost in the process.

Some church leaders have told me that if 10 potential volunteers express an interest in serving, only about 4 or 5 will actually make it. That can certainly kill your volunteer recruiting efforts. 

In my experience, a good onboarding process will lead to 90% placement, meaning 9 out of 10 people who express an interest in serving end up getting placed in a serving role.

A solid onboarding process will include the following:

• Clear, specific steps each person has to take
• Digital options to speed everything up
• Communication with each step to remind them to take it
• A quick follow-up from staff along the way
• Necessary cross-checks and precautions to catch anything questionable

Tighten up your onboarding process and you should see 90% or more potential volunteers stick. 

Not Asking Boldly

This one is more of a gut feeling of mine, particularly since the pandemic. Unlike the rest of this list, I don’t have data on this. However, it seems to me that we have to be more bold in asking people to serve. 

Do you agree? 

I think people are more guarded with their time and less willing to commit than they were some years ago. Which means we have to be more bold.

We’re not selling cars or timeshares here.

We’re not inviting people to serve to help us.

We’re not even inviting people to serve just to help the church.

We invite them to serve because serving will help them grow their faith as they partner with God on his mission. We don’t have to be shy about inviting them to serve and challenging their priorities.

Someone once did that for me, and I’m forever grateful. 

Too Many Competing Options

This last one probably kills volunteer recruitment more than anything besides the first one, and it’s also the hardest to address. For many churches, especially established ones with a long history, there are just too many options competing for people’s time. 

If someone must choose between attending a service, attending a class or group, serving in kids ministry, or any other option, everything loses. However, it’s hard to tell exactly how much everything is losing because most of the time, the church has never had a different reality to compare it to. 

If you can remove some big options competing for people’s time in your church, recruiting them to serve will be much easier. 

Recruit More Volunteers

Countless factors impact volunteer recruitment in your church, both positively and negatively. These six are some of the biggest ones I’ve seen that can kill your volunteer recruiting efforts. 

If you can address them, even just a few, you can recruit a full team of volunteers.