I have been a volunteer and I have been the leader of volunteers (sometimes as a success and sometimes as a
complete flop). Here are the things I have learned working in churches and non-profit organizations.
1. Understand your organizational culture. Before you can know how to get more
volunteers you need to understand what part of your organizational culture is preventing volunteers. I will let
you ponder that question but you might also find some answers below.
2. Prerequisites. Jesus didn’t have prerequisites. He said, come follow me. Learn from me. Do what I do.
When (not if) you make mistakes, apologize, ask for forgiveness, learn from it and move on toward My mission
and for My glory.
Institutions created prerequisites to protect themselves. But here is the problem – people are messy, prerequisites
or no prerequisites. There are a couple of things to consider when setting guidelines for volunteers.
First, people are busy. If they desire to use their gifts in your organization, they are no longer willing to jump
through a list of proverbial hoops to get you to trust them. They can go elsewhere or be content to invest
their energies in their own interests, family, or friends.
Second, prerequisites create a consumer mentality. If you do not have a culture where everyone participates,
then you have a culture where a few do all the work. While the few burnout, the rest bury their gifts and the
stories that were meant to be share with others. Eventually those gifts and stories die and so does the person’s
love for serving.
Pg. 21