10 Ways to (Lightly) Reset Your Volunteer Team This Year
It’s a brand-new trip around the sun. And if you’re like me, you enjoy a new page on the calendar, a blank sheet of paper, a mile-marker opportunity to hit the reset button on a few things in life. I love the challenge of a new year in January. I thrive on a new set of checkboxes that’ll take me through December. And I curl into a fetal position, sobbing underneath my desk, when I realize I failed to check off most of my checkboxes by the time the ink dries on my new set of checkboxes.
I digress.
If you lead volunteers, a new year serves as a great new opportunity to reset a few things. Notice I didn’t say blow it to smithereens and rebuild from the ground up. (Although if that floats your destructive boat, grab some dynamite and you do you, boo.)
No, reset a few things means making tweaks to an already-pretty-good system. As Claire Hughes Johnson says in her great book, Scaling People: “…a lot of people make the mistake of trying to build a Cadillac Escalade when they should really be trying to build a Toyota Camry, or maybe even a bicycle. Ask yourself what the most lightweight change is that you can make, then grow from there.”
If your volunteer team has good bones, a demolition will be destructive in more ways than one. Instead, consider these ten ways to (lightly) reset your team in the new year:
1. Clean up your roster.
You probably inherited a few folks when you took the role (and you’ve never actually met them), or you’re still holding out hope for those vols who disappeared during the pandemic (they’re not coming back). Take a morning and go through your rolls. Call those who might be on the fringes. Set up coffee with those who have been AWOL for a few weeks. But get your roster down to actual people who actually show up, so you know who you’re working with.
2. Unify your name tags.
The chances are good that along with those inherited volunteers, you might have multiple generations of name tags. From the old school Sunday School Board engraved USHER tags to your attempt at in-house printed tags to your newer-more-professional style in-house printed tags, when they look like chaos, it makes it hard for your guests to know who is doing what. (By the way, we’re big fans of in-house lanyard printers here.)
3. Review your onboarding training.
How long has it been since you looked at your training for new volunteers? Do you even have training for new volunteers? Dust off your manual and decide whether it communicates the true values of your team. Schedule out your onboarding dates for the upcoming year. And if you need some tips on training, here’s a curated set of posts to help.
4. Implement ongoing training.
#3 above takes care of your new volunteers, but what about seasoned volunteers? Look for “train as you go” opportunities in your volunteer huddle, your VHQ, or any number of other options. And once more, go ahead and get those on your calendar for the new year.
5. Formalize your “Just checking in” system.
As you look over your roster (#1 above), you may realize that there are some of your volunteers that you simply can’t remember the last time you spoke to them. So don’t just hope it’ll happen, plan for it to happen. Block out ten minutes a week to make a phone call, send a few texts, or write a couple of emails to simply (a) thank a volunteer for serving and (b) ask how you can serve them through prayer, a practical act of service, whatever they need in this season.
6. Schedule some parties.
#5 takes care of your one-on-one gratitude, but how about some one-to-all opportunities for appreciation? Look at your next 12 months, and come up with two times to get the band together and hang out with zero agenda. Whether it’s pizza or steak, a church member’s backyard or a swanky conference hall, gratitude can scale to whatever budget you’re working with.
7. Plan your promotion.
Does your congregation-at-large know about the places they can serve? Have you led need overtake opportunity? Have you let your asking culture wane? Get with your lead pastor and other ministry heads and talk about how you can bring serving back to the forefront this year, and formalize your schedule for when you’re going to talk about the get to opportunities rather than the guilted to bully pulpit.
8. Organize your storage closet.
Very few things have such a wide-reaching impact like an organized spot for volunteers to know where to find their stuff. Yes, that first cleanout may take a dump truck and a day or two, but then a few minutes per week is all you need to keep it in tip-top shape. So grab your label maker and some storage bins, and get to cleaning your proverbial exit ramp.
9. Invest in some key leaders.
Once you have a clear plan for #3 and #4, it’s time to look to your leadership. Pick a book, plan a Collective, or form a Cohort to develop the next layer of your leadership pipeline. This year, it may just be one other person. Next year, it can be two or three. But start where you are and build a group of people that you can pour into.
10. Ask “What’s next?”
Our first nine steps were in various stages of light resets. But now it’s time to look towards the future. As you’re working through any of the above, you’re almost guaranteed to spot gaps in your process. Things you want to reinvent. New challenges you want to tackle. Don’t feel the pressure to do them all in the moment. Rather, keep a running list, and chart a course for what next year’s resets could look like. Giving yourself this kind of margin ensures you won’t introduce too much too soon, and allows you to scale up with your volunteers.
