VOLUNTEER MANAGEMENT PROPOSAL - May 2015 - Volunteer Scheduling and Check-In Recommendations

Sep 26, 2026

Evanston Bible Fellowship’s Sunday services rely on multiple volunteer teams, but the current scheduling approach lacks uniformity and creates absenteeism and tardiness issues. The proposal analyzes rotation feasibility, including whether volunteers should serve only one team, and designs an optimal rotational plan across teams. It also recommends a communication workflow using Planning Center to improve leader-to-volunteer coordination and reduce misalignment. Finally, it evaluates an added Planning Center check-in role and recommends additional volunteers and coverage intervals to standardize accountability.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryGeneral

FormatPDF

Pages29

Reading Time10 min

AccessFree to download

Executive Summary

Problem

Rotational Schedule Options

Communication Proposal

Check-In Recommendation

Conclusion

Appendix

VOLUNTEER MANAGEMENT PROPOSAL Client: Evanston Bible Fellowship Lydia VanZalen, Lauren Patras, Monica McGreal, Roderic Figueroa May 2015 1 Executive Summary Evanston Bible Fellowship (EBF) is a local church in Evanston that depends on several volunteers to provide church services each Sunday morning. In order to operate, the church depends on the following teams to provide their individual volunteer services: AV Team, Children’s Church, Security Team, Mover Team, Usher Team, Welcome Team, EBF 101, Counters, and Worship Team. In its current state, there is no uniformity between the teams and how the volunteers are scheduled. There also have been significant problems with absenteeism and late shows amongst the volunteers. Our team’s task was to provide analysis and recommendations on how to best solve these issues. Our team focused on three primary deliverables to provide our client, Kyle Butson, with a solution for some of the current scheduling issues. First, we first sought to provide analysis on the feasibility of limiting the volunteers to only serve on one team in addition to providing an optimal rotational schedule that specifies the number of teams and members on each team within each volunteer role. Secondly, we sought to provide a communication plan that would instruct the team leaders on how to schedule and communicate with their volunteers by utilizing the program, Planning Center. Thirdly, as the church is investigating purchasing a new feature of Planning Center that would require volunteers to “check-in” upon arrival on a Sunday morning, we sought to provide analysis on the number of additional volunteers that this role would require. We recommend that as a church, EBF should not require volunteers to only serve on one team. This would limit the volunteers’preferences and could lead to a decrease in volunteer satisfaction. We also propose that the team leaders utilize Planning Center by notifying their volunteers month by month when they are scheduled, based off of our optimal rotations. EBF already uses the software, therefore there are no implementation costs, and utilizing its functionality would provide a more streamlined form of communication between leaders and volunteers. We also recommend that the church schedule three volunteers at different time intervals on a given Sunday morning to account for the new Check-In role. This role would increase volunteer accountability and could provide a uniform platform for absenteeism, rather than the variability that results from depending on individual team leaders. 2 Contents Executive Summary………………………………………………………………………….....…1 Problem……………………………………………………………………………………………3 Rotational Schedule Options…………………………………………………………………...….5 Communication Proposal…………………………………………………………………...……10 Check-In Recommendation……………………………………………………………………...11 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….12 Appendix…………………………………………………………………………………………13 3 Problem Our primary objective for this project was to find optimal allocations for volunteer scheduling in order to decrease absenteeism/tardiness while not sacrificing the satisfaction of leaders and volunteers. We decided to separate this project into optimal scheduling, a communication proposal, and a recommendation to update the check-in process. In order to better understand EBF’s weekly volunteer process, we mapped out the way atypical day of service would be organized in terms of scheduling leaders and volunteers, as shown below in Figure 1. In mapping out a typical day of service, we had to keep in mind certain issues such as avoiding the possibility of overextending volunteers’ scheduling and decrease overlap among teams. After speaking with our client, we agreed that there was an issue with some roles not being clearly defined as well as there being roles that could possibly be merged in order to increase overall accountability. There was also many situations where we found volunteers being sc

FAQs

What problem does the proposal address for Evanston Bible Fellowship volunteers?

It addresses lack of uniformity in volunteer scheduling, plus significant issues with absenteeism and late arrivals. It also highlights communication gaps between leaders and volunteers and last-minute adjustments that burden leaders.

What does the proposal recommend for volunteer team assignments?

It recommends that EBF should not require volunteers to serve on only one team. The proposal argues this could reduce volunteer satisfaction and limits volunteers’ preferences.

How does the proposal plan to improve communication and accountability?

It recommends that team leaders use Planning Center to notify volunteers month by month according to the optimal rotations. It also recommends scheduling volunteers at different time intervals to support a new check-in role and create a more uniform accountability platform.

Sep 26, 2026

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