BTW, I serve in Studio 45 each week on Saturday at 5:00. I can’t get away with ever ditching (even once) since my Cast Member Relations staff has me on speed dial. :) Oh the joys of a good accountability partner…

Maybe it’s just a “term of art”, but “repeat OFFENDERS” is a little strong a way to put it, isn’t it?

Just a thought from a LifeKids volunteer…

My accountability partner, Toni Quinton, is the LifeKIDS Cast Member Relations Director at the OKC campus and manages about 300 volunteers. Even at that scale, if someone doesn’t show up–even one time–she responds quickly. It is almost always that they were too sick to call, had something really unexpected come up, or just forgot.

By letting the person know they were missed and cared for, the problem overall stays very low (less than 10%). With repeat offenders, she coaches them to find a better match for them–a different time, a different age group, a different role, moving to Host Team or Youth, or stepping out for a break.

She also schedules at a percentage to accomodate that 10% rate so that the rooms are still covered. Overall, a campus is considered to have reached the “excellence” level if each experience is 90% covered as needed.

Timely, loving follow-up is imperative to keep the show up rate high. We’ve had really unfortunate situations in the past where, because of no follow up, people stayed on the schedule even though they hadn’t shown up in weeks. That’s not doing us any good filling roles–even worse it means there are people sitting out there feeling unneeded and uncared for. Extreme overscheduling has the same result for those who show up though so you have to be careful.

FYI - you can send SMS just like email if you know what provider they are with. For example, to SMS someone on Cingular or AT&T, just send an email to, for instance, 9185551234@txt.att.net and it will SMS them. Be sure to keep it short! I think SMS maxes out at around 160 characters.

I really like the four questions to ask when volunteers commitment is low.

Our Children’s staff uses it to remind people of which experience they are serving in on a weekly basis.

We’ve also used to pass on invites to church, and encouraged our people to pass it on to their addressbook.

my first response is always to blame myself for communication issues…like recently when we have a service project in the community and our “show up rate” drops 20%-30%…then i find, like you said, there are minor adjustments needed…some not even involving me…

thanks!

For instance, if I ask my LifeKids Director to have personal contact with each volunteer this week and then on the weekend her volunteer participation was down from usual numbers, then I need to do some evaluating. Did she communicate effectively during those phone calls? Was she leading the individual according to their strengths or just treating everyone the same?

If anything, numbers help indicate minor adjustment areas, not just full blown problem areas (that kind of sounds like semantics). Any other thoughts from LC staff??

Really good stuff. I tend to read a lot in the business genre and find a lot that is totally applicable. There’s a really good The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action vibe to the kinds of measurements you’re writing about. And that leads to the right kind of understanding.

Thanks for sharing these posts with us! Great stuff.

Jon asked if there is a percentage that tips us off that there is a problem…

Jon, I’m not involved analyzing these numbers so I’m not sure. If anyone at Central or on a Campus team knows specifics, please help Jon out.

Thanks so much for doing this “metrics” series of posts. It has been an enormous help to me. I served at a church where the focus was how can we get everything reduced to one experience…I am beginning to see now the better question would have been, “how can we add more?”

Thanks for passing on what God has been teaching…