Googling will get you thousands of articles on healthy church volunteerism, and most are worthwhile. This is my curated list of specifically church-focused resources, and especially useful secular volunteerism sources. 

Church-specific

TheEquipper.org is my website, created to encourage churches to intentionally help their people serve (rather than unintentionally hindering them). Without patting myself on the back too hard, I haven’t seen another site that looks at both the necessary practical aspects and the important theology that motivates us, or that considers everyday serving alongside typical volunteering. 

The Chalmer Center, https://chalmers.org/, paints an overarching theological understanding of poverty, and lots of help with the practicalities in the challenging work of serving people experiencing material poverty, both locally and globally, in effective and healthful ways.

How to Manage Church Volunteers by Marlene Wilson is a ‘golden oldie’ book from the 1980’s, one of the first resources to apply general volunteer engagement practices to the church.

Don’t overlook your own congregation as a resource. People with skills and experience in leading and organizing people can be helpful not only for individual events, but for evaluating and improving the big picture. Consider talking to:

• Those who organize large events at work or school involving volunteers
• Those who work or worked in organizations, particularly nonprofits, involving volunteers
• Event planners
• Human resource people who do interviewing, placing, assessing, etc.
• Those with executive-level experience in organizations that successfully involve volunteers

Not church-specific

Organizations involving volunteers (hospitals, museums, park districts, Red Cross, etc.) experience many of the same volunteer-recruitment challenges as churches. But overall this sector is further along than the church when it comes to best practices to recruit and retain volunteers, so there is much we can learn. But working with non-church organizations, and learning from them, is foreign for many of us, and we certainly can’t collaborate with nonprofits whose aims are hostile to ours. I addressed these challenges from the church side in  “Sacred and Secular Volunteering.” To encourage appropriate collaboration from the secular side, I wrote “The Wall Between Faith-Based and Secular Volunteering: Is It Time to Chip Away at the Barrier?” for an international journal for volunteer administrators. In general, we may have different motivations than our friends in secular volunteering, but we share the aim of working with volunteers to advance our organization’s mission for the betterment of our communities.

Energize Inc. has been my go-to site for resources for many years. Their former head, Susan Ellis (now deceased) created and gathered practical resources from across the globe, now archived here. I especially appreciated her monthly “Hot Topic” newsletters. While now decades old, it’s amazing how many are as pertinent today as they were then. 

“Training Busy Staff to Succeed with Volunteers” by Betty Stallings, is a set of 55-minute training modules on various aspects of volunteer recruitment and training. Anyone with some experience working with volunteers can use this older but not outdated resource to train others, or simply to start productive conversations. And it appears to now be free.

Points of Light is a national organization encouraging and supporting volunteerism. Their website has free resources.

Managing and leading volunteers has become a profession in its own right. If you’re fortunate enough to come across some who has earned a CVA (Certified in Volunteer Administration) credential, know that they have completed a rigorous process to prove their knowledge and experience. For more info, see the CVA website.

Check out your local community for these organizations:

• Many communities have a local volunteerism center that connects potential volunteers to local organizations, and often also offers free or low cost seminars to leaders on best volunteerism practices. Many of these are part of the Points of Light network.
• Many communities also have local networks of people who lead volunteers in an organization. Often referred to as DOVIAs (Directors of Volunteers in Organizations), I joined one in each of the two metro areas where I served churches. Being the only church-related volunteer leader in each, it sometimes was uncomfortable, but I think I was good for them and I know they were good for me!

There’s a growing number of businesses that cater to this growing field, and many offer free resources that can be helpful.

• Databases for volunteer management. Most church-focused database tools include some modules for working with volunteers, but these two offer databases designed primarily for volunteerism
  • The Better Impact website offers helpful resources and a blog. I especially appreciate the work of their leader Tony Goodrow on how to evaluate the ‘return on investment’ that volunteers provide, going way beyond just the ‘money saved’ on staffing.  
  • Volgistics, another volunteer-specific database, also has a blog.
• VolunteerPro offers a wealth of resources, trainings and support to those who purchase a membership. Many of the trainings can also be purchased individually.