3 Tips for Building a Volunteer Team

When I started blogging several years ago, I had no idea what I was getting into.  Y’all it’s a lot of work.  I may actually be working harder than when I was an elementary school teacher.  That is because when I was a teacher, my primary job was to focus on the teaching content.  The content was given to me, and I just needed to come up with a creative way to deliver it to my students.  

As a content creator, writer, speaker, and entrepreneur, I am still delivering content, but I am also creating the content that I am delivering.  Then I have to market it in order to find my target audience.  I need to create social media content, communicate with my audience consistently, make money, pay bills, pay taxes, update my website, stay relevant, attend conferences, write, read, sleep and eat and somehow find time to clean my house, feed my kids, and be a wife.  

This is hard work and why we need a team.  But before we build a team, there are foundational steps we need to take. 

1. Know who you are and who you serve.  Sometimes we try to rally volunteers while they may be trying to figure out what it is we need help with.  Potential volunteers may not know if what we are doing is something they want to be a part of.  This is why we must be clear about our ‘why.”  What is our reason?  Why do we do what we do?  When we succinctly and clearly communicate who we are and who we serve, people will come and ask, “How can I help?  I want to be a part of what you are doing.  I believe in this.”  They can’t do that if we are not clear about who we are and who we serve. 
2. Identify your duties and responsibilities. For years I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off doing things, but not really able to articulate what I did every day.  That is until I created a standard operating procedure Google document.  I listed out everything I did each week with specificity.  Then I assigned a title to each set of tasks.  Once I did this, I now had a list of roles I needed people to fulfill.  I was positioning myself to begin recruiting volunteers to do what I needed them to do.  We can’t ask people to help us if we have not taken the time to outline our duties and responsibilities.  If we are disorganized in this area, we will only waste their time. 
3. Create a valuable product.  The emphasis is on valuable.  Purpose will draw volunteers to us, but free stuff will keep them.  Do we have a course, coaching, or a membership community that we could give volunteers access to?  It has to be something that they actually want.  This is called bartering. I give you access to this product in exchange for one to four hours a month of work.  If we do not have a product we can afford to give away, we should pump the brakes on building that dynamic volunteer team until we have a way to compensate them without money.

The goal is to create a mutually beneficial relationship.  That means we need to have something to bring to the table in exchange for their time, energy and expertise. 

Here’s a bonus tip.  Pray, pray, pray!  This is the glue that draws the right people to you.  Volunteer relationships are God-soaked opportunities for us to disciple and pour into the individuals on our volunteer team.  Pray that God will send the right people to you and that the experience will be mutually beneficial for all parties involved.  Do not try to do everything yourself. 

The beautiful reality is this: when you invest the time to clarify your mission, organize your systems, and create genuine value for others, you’re not just building a volunteer team—you’re cultivating a community of purpose-driven people who are excited to be part of something meaningful. 

“From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament,  grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”  Ephesians 4:16

Question: How have volunteers assisted you in ministry?  How have you been able to help another Christian leader as a volunteer?