3 Weeks of Recruiting Ideas

Sometimes when it comes to recruiting volunteers, you need to think outside the box.  Bulletin announcements & mass emails are just not working. That’s when you do a BIG Recruiting Event.  Here are some recruiting ideas that we did to make our Recruiting Event Successful:

1.  Make your events BIG!  You need to do things that will catch people’s attention and get them to notice you.

2.  Be visual!  Make a display & use media, posters or stuff to show people what you need.

3.  Show people that Kids Ministry is FUN!  Give them a taste of what you do in your program.

4.  Do more than one Sunday.  Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.  Families do not necessarily come to church every week so you need to have your BIG recruiting event take place over multiple Sundays.

5.  Be prepared with sign up sheets, applications & police check forms.  Get people’s contact info (email) so that you can connect with them.  Don’t leave it up to them to connect with you.  They probably won’t.

We did 3 Sundays and this is what we did:

Week 1: (yes, all of this happened during the Sunday morning)

• Video Announcement on the big screens in the main auditorium during the service.
• Bulletin announcement – casting vision about what a difference volunteers make in the lives of kids
• Flyer in the bulletin
• Kiosk in atrium in high traffic area for people to sign up
• Person (Kids pastor or other highly invested leaders) at the kiosk to personally talk with people
• sign up sheets  with 3 options to choose from (summer help, vbs help or help in the fall)
• TV with power point presentation running.  These slides included volunteers in action & titles of positions where we needed help
• Music.  It’s gotta be upbeat & fun.  We played the instrumental version of the LEGO movie.  Everything was awesome!
• BUBBLE MACHINE – this definitely caught people’s attention and created an element of fun.  It attracted a crowd of kids who wanted to catch the bubbles & the adults had to walk through the tornado of bubbles on their way out after the service.

Week 2:

• Kids wearing posterboards with signs.  (see picture above) 5 kids walked around places that were populated with people with sandwich board signs on their front & back.  Many people commented on how effective these were.
• Kiosk in atrium in high traffic area for people to sign up
• Person (Kids pastor or other highly invested leaders) at the kiosk to personally talk with people
• sign up sheets  with 3 options to choose from (summer help, vbs help or help in the fall)
• Power Puppet (we purchased this from Little Mountain Productions).  We only bring this out for special occasions and this was one of them.  The puppet basically said things like, “we need your help”  “sign up today to help with the kids”.  You can see a video of this in action here:

Week 3:

• Kids wearing sandwich signs again.  Once again, very effective.
• Dance Party – we had flashing colourful lights & a projector with Kids Worship DVDs.  I will admit this wasn’t as big of a WOW factor as we were hoping, as our atrium has a lot of windows and it was a beautiful sunny day.  Dance party lights & projectors work much better in a darker room.  FYI.  However, we played the DVD on a large screen TV, cranked the volume, and people noticed the great music so that helped to catch their attention.
• Kiosk in atrium in high traffic area for people to sign up
• Person (Kids pastor or other highly invested leaders) at the kiosk to personally talk with people
• sign up sheets  with 3 options to choose from (summer help, vbs help or help in the fall)

For more information on how to find kinds ministry leaders, click here.