Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

This Saturday I spent some time putting together a mosaic at Charlotte’s Place, Trinity Wall Street’s community center. This is part of an ongoing art project in which parishioners and staff and even tourists who stop by can help create a mosaic, guided by professional artist Jackie Chang.

It’s a pretty large project – four mosaics that will hang on the walls and two in the bathrooms (I know, a mosaic in the bathroom doesn’t sound particularly nice, but they really are lovely). Chang has done an excellent job of using the community’s ideas and skills to come up with a project that looks lovely. The first day we brainstormed ideas and we did some cutting and tracing and drawing. She took all this to design the mosaics.

Using the skills of the community to create something of high quality is an important skill in the church. Here are a few tips that might help when working with volunteers on a large project that I’ve picked up from working with Chang and from my own experience working with volunteers:

• Establish the volunteer coordinator as an authority or leader. Your volunteers can often tell if you are confident in your role as leader of the group. It was clear early on that Chang knew what she was doing, and so we deferred to her. Of course, not every coordinator is experienced, so having the blessing of the priest and other church leaders also helps.
• Have a clear vision and standards for the project before you begin. This will make it easier to guide your volunteers, and to tell them what kind of work is or is not acceptable. For example, when creating the mosaic we could cut the tiles into smaller pieces or glue them down whole. We couldn’t, however, put them too close together or there wouldn’t be room for the grout between them.
• Be clear about what you will be asking (and not asking) people to do at the beginning. Some volunteers are willing to do a lot of tedious, boring tasks, but only if they know what they are getting into ahead of time. Others want to have some autonomy to make decisions and to have a big project to work on. This is good, but you can run into trouble if your volunteers are surprised to find they’ll be filing all day, for example, and they thought they’d be doing something more exciting.
• Make everyone feel like what they are doing is important. Don’t give your volunteers busy work. This doesn’t mean you can’t ask your volunteers to do tedious tasks, but it does mean you should only give your volunteers tasks with which you actually need help, or they’ll feel like they’re wasting their time (and they are).

What is your advice when working with volunteers?