Our Children’s Ministry Volunteers Donated $42,900 In Time This Year!

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

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