Church Director Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials

Creating and Managing Events For Your Volunteers

James — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:20:32 +0000

No matter what kind of event you need to track, it is important to know what other events may be happening at the same time. Events managed or staffed by volunteers are often scheduled by the method the leader finds best works for their individual team: Google Calendar, printed calendars, spreadsheets, phone calls, hallway conversations, emails, and blogs. While these are great tools for a single team, they prevent other teams from overlapping events or scheduling team-specific events easily.

Common problems that can occur as a result of not having a unified volunteer scheduling system include:

Scheduling conflicts - volunteers are scheduled for too many events for a specific day or week
Family conflicts - Spouses are scheduled for the same day requiring one spouse to miss out on a volunteer opportunity
Burnout - volunteers are overwhelmed due to a heavy schedule or events scheduled near important holidays

Flexible Scheduling is Important

Not every church or non-profit manage their events the same way. Church Director offers a variety of ways to track the different kinds of events for your church or non-profit. These include:

One-time events - special meetings and fund raisers
Weekly events - weekly church services and all-hands meetings
Weekly events with exceptions - group meetings or events that need one week off per month
Monthly events - leadership meetings and budget meetings

There are four different ways to create a new event in Church Director. Let’s take a look at each one.

Creating One-Time Events and Conferences

Teams often need to schedule special meetings, one day conferences, or a conference that spans multiple days. Allowing these conferences to be scheduled in Church Director enables consistent coverage for each day and prevents double-booking volunteers for one day while not having enough volunteers the next.

To setup a one-time event or conference:

Enter a name and location for your event
Select the Recurring type to ‘None’
Enter the start date for the event
Enter the end date (leave it the same as the start date for a 1-day event)
Optionally, select the start time

1. Creating a church conference event

Creating Weekly Recurring Events

Weekly events are commonly associated with things like Sunday services for church and weekly leadership meetings. These events may be open-ended or limited to a specific date range to match a season or academic school year.

To setup a weekly recurring event:

Enter a name and location for your event
Select the Recurring type to ‘Weekly’
Select the day of the week
(Optional) Enter the start date for the event
(Optional) Enter the end date
(Optional) Select the start time

2. Creating a Bible study event

Creating Weekly Recurring Events with Exceptions

Weekly events that require one week off per month are easy to setup as well. This is often the case when an event meets for every week except a specific week when a monthly recurring event occurs. A common example is a church small group that meets on Wednesday nights, except for one Wednesday night per month where they meet for a church worship service.

To setup a weekly recurring event with an exception rule:

Enter a name and location for your event
Select the Recurring type to ‘Weekly’
Select the day of the week
Select the exception to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th week of the month
(Optional) Enter the start date for the event
(Optional) Enter the end date
(Optional) Select the start time

3. Managing small group events

Creating Monthly Recurring Events

Monthly recurring events are useful for managing anything from leadership meetings to routine building maintenance. Several monthly recurring events can be combined to create alternating 1st and 3rd week or 2nd and 4th week events, or any combination desired. You may also select the 5th week of the month to create special events that only occur 6 times per calendar year.

To setup a monthly recurring event:

Enter a name and location for your event
Select the Recurring type to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th week of the month
Select the day of the week
(Optional) Enter the start date for the event
(Optional) Enter the end date
(Optional) Select the start time

4. Creating a first Wednesday recurring event

Church Director makes it easy to setup one-time and recurring events for your volunteers. Just by spending a few minutes to capture church and team events into your Church Director calendar will help both you and your volunteers stay in sync with their schedules and assignments.

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5 Reasons to Create a Volunteer Scheduling System

James — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 21:17:47 +0000

Creating a volunteer schedule can be difficult without the right tools. In fact, many leaders decide to skip building schedules because of the added cost of time to build and manage a team schedule. However, there are quite a few benefits to building a team schedule. In this article, we’ll outline 5 huge reasons for creating a volunteer schedule for your team.

Reason 1: Volunteer schedules provide predictability

Life can get stressful: family, work, and other things that occupy their time and energy. A volunteer schedule provides some predictability into their lives.

Without a consistent schedule, your volunteers are unable to get into the rhythm that is so necessary as a part-time contributor. Instead, they have trouble easily transitioning from their life’s activities to their role as a volunteer, negatively impacting their performance. They may also show up late and unprepared.Or, they may never show up at all.

Want to reduce the number of times people show up late or no-show? Create a schedule that fits their lifestyle and meets the needs of your team.

Reason 2: Scheduling volunteers provides much needed time off

Have you ever reached your limit at work or home, where you just can’t find the energy to get things done? Or, perhaps you have the energy but the creativity and excitement is missing?

Volunteer scheduling provides not only a consistent pattern of service, it also makes it easy to take time off. Both the team leader and their volunteers can easily see how much time they have given recently and plan for time off. With a schedule, the team leader can know ahead of time for planned vacations and time off. Given proper notice (a 4-6 week period is usually enough for planned time off), leaders can easily locate short-term assistance or adjust schedules to provide much needed time off for their volunteers.

In addition, team leaders can schedule some time off for themselves. With a predictable schedule and a backup leader to cover major issues, leaders can take some much needed rest without the need to worry about people not showing up. Everyone knows their schedules and receive a reminder email prior to the event to ensure they’ll be there.

Reason 3: Recruiting volunteers becomes easier

Happy volunteers leads to easier volunteer recruiting. While much more can be discussed on the topic of recruiting volunteers, one thing is certain: happy volunteers are more likely to recruit their friends and help find other volunteers.The other option is to skip scheduling volunteers, create stress and opportunities for volunteers to forget, and create a team of volunteers that would never want to recruit their worst enemies into your team.

Save yourself some time and utilize a volunteer scheduling strategy as a method of recruiting new volunteers.

Reason 4: Schedules allow you to develop new leaders

Volunteer schedules provide predictability. They also provide more free time for team leaders. This free time can be used to invest in the next generation of team leaders. This investment allows new leaders to be prepared without undue stress by the team leader, as the leader can be certain about event coverage and overall team execution.

Once a team leader has begun investing in a new set of potential leaders, one of the first tasks that can be taught and transferred to these new leaders is scheduling. Given a short list of do’s and don’t’s, a new leader can easily begin to take control of volunteer scheduling. This frees up the team leader for doing other things.

Building a volunteer schedule helps build new leaders.

Reason 5: Schedules provide stability to staff

Staff need to know what is going on. This is especially important when it comes to weekly or special events. Since they have so many other fires to deal with during an event, the staff need to know that all important volunteer jobs are covered. What better way than creating a predictable schedule with an assignment report available just before the event to show who and how many volunteers are covering each job?

Your staff will thank you when they have one less thing to worry about - volunteer coverage.

Volunteer Scheduling vs. Church Management Systems (ChMS)

James — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:56:52 +0000

I’ve been asked why we started building a volunteer scheduling tool rather than build a complete Church Management System (ChMS). It is simple, really: it is about empowering the lay leaders in the Body.

I hope God has used us to build something that empowers lay leaders. Lay leaders seem to get the shaft when it comes to church software. They aren’t staff members and don’t need lots of reports about attendance, as ChMS vendors provide. Their team is not onsite 8+ hours per day with them, so they cannot always communicate with those in their team.

Lay leaders need tools that can extend their reach beyond the staff into the volunteers that make the church run. They need tools that can run without being on the church network. They need tools that focus on what they have to do (lead, manage, and schedule).

That is what Church Director is about - empowering church leaders, specifically lay leaders, with tools they need to build the kingdom. We pray that we are fulfilling this mission. Please let us know if we are not.