How much are your Children’s Ministry volunteers worth?
Of course, they are beyond value. But, what if you could calculate the weekly budget needed to hire replacements? Here is a group exercise I developed for a College level Children’s Ministry class. I was the guest teacher on the topic of volunteers. I wanted to communicate to the students (current and future Children’s ministers) how essential volunteers are to every ministry. It was a training session designed to inform and motivate the learners. The students all seemed to get my point – volunteers are the ministry.
This could be a great tool to get a handle on how much responsibility you have when working with volunteers. You could use it to show the finance people that most of your resources are people – so a few hundred more dollars is a small request!
Let me know if you find this helpful by leaving a comment. You can also download this worksheet as a Word Document. Enjoy.
Worksheet: Estimating Cash Value of Church Volunteer Time
_______________ = Sunday School Volunteer Hours Each Sunday
_______________ = Nursery Volunteer Hours Each Sunday
_______________ = Children’s Church and Extended Session
_______________ = Sunday Evening Children’s Programs
_______________ = Volunteer Coordinators (reminder phone calls)
_______________ = Mid Week Programs
_______________ = Other Volunteer Led Programs
_______________ = Total Hours Donated Each Week
@ $10 per hour (Avg. private sector wage in the U.S. for Jan 2007 is $17.17/hour)
_______________ = Estimate Weekly Value of Volunteer Hours
_______________ = Weekly Children’s Ministry Budget (exclude seasonal events)
My Children’s Ministry volunteers deserve $42,900 per year.
When I ran the numbers for my church I found out that our volunteer labor is worth at least 4 times the entire children’s ministry budget. That was assuming a meager $10 per hour for the volunteers. We all know that they work with passion and dedication that is worth far more.
- Read Children’s Ministry Volunteers That Stick
- Read how to Get (and keep) 183 new volunteers
- Download the Word Document version of this worksheet