4 Ways to Identify Your Kidmin Volunteers
Image from Childrensministry.com
You have a brand-new family come into your church. They’ve navigated all the signs. Shook hands with a greeter and found their way to your kidmin area. There are a lot of adults standing around. Some look like parents. Others are teenagers. Still others could be grandparents or just adults standing around. Your guests are not sure who to talk to or who all these people are. One of the biggest questions a guest asks about their kids is “will my little one be safe?”
There are a lot of things you can do to communicate to parents that their kids will be safe. But one of the best ways to make it easy to identify who is a volunteer and who is not.
There are a lot of different ways you can communicate a person is a volunteer. Some are relatively cheap, while others can be expensive. Which one you choose depends on your church’s budget. Some are easy to identify from a distance, while others may need to be more observant.
In this post, I’ll outline 4 ways I’ve used to identify volunteers as well as their pros and cons. Hopefully by the end you’ll be armed the knowledge you need to make an informed decision.
1. Nothing
The cheapest and easiest to deploy volunteer identification is nothing at all. Volunteers wear whatever they want and move freely in and out of the kids space. Guests can tell if someone is volunteering by their location in the room.
While this is easy (and certainly cheaper) it doesn’t answer the safety question parents are asking. Sure, you can have all your volunteers background checked and CPR certified. But if a parent can’t easily identify who is supposed to be there or who is just dropping off, that extra work can be wasted.
Think about it this way. If you’re in a store and need assistance, how will you find the employee? If you’re in Target, you’re looking for a red shirt and khakis. If you’re at Walmart you’re looking for a blue vest. You can see them from across an aisle. However, other stores just have name tags or less. You’re stuck looking for someone messing with product on the shelves or going to a register.
It’s not the best experience. So, unless you have zero funds, I advise you not to use this option. You need to have some way to identify volunteers.
2. Lanyard/Name Tag
Another popular and relatively inexpensive way to identify your volunteers is with lanyards or name tags. Lanyards work great for adult and youth ministries. And I have used them with success in kidmin. However, they can be hazardous in preschool or nursery as kids will pull on them.
If you use lanyards, you have several options to consider.
Do the volunteers take them home or do you keep them?
If you keep them, where do you keep them?
Are your lanyards generic with your church or kidmin logo that says volunteer?
Or are your lanyards volunteer specific, with their name and other information?
It may seem easier to send the lanyards home with your volunteers, especially if their name is on it. However, in my experience these tend to not come back. When I used lanyards, I had hooks in one of kidmin closets for volunteers to hang their lanyards. I had to replace far fewer lanyards that way.
Additionally, choosing to go with generic name tags is easier and cheaper. You only need as many as are serving in that service. Also, if one gets lost, replacing it could be as simple as printing another one.
However, printing lanyards with the volunteer’s name produces a level of ownership. They feel they are part of the team. It will cost more to replace but I think it’s worth it. My volunteers loved their personalized ones way more than the generic ones.
Another option is to use your church’s check-in system and print the volunteer name tag. You most likely already do this for kids, so printing one for your volunteers shouldn’t be that difficult. Planning Center allows you to print a volunteer specific tag that can look completely different from the kids.
I’ve used both options with great success.
3. Vests
Full-disclosure, I’ve never used this option,. But I’ve seen it done at other churches, specifically in nurseries and preschools. You can get a smock-like cover that goes over the volunteers’ clothes, or a regular vest with logos and/or a slogan.
Similar to generic lanyards, you only need as many of these as you have volunteers that serve in a service. So, they will be cheaper than t-shirts. Also, vests can fit many more body types, so you can limit the size choices to best fit your needs.
Vests and far easier to see from a distance than a lanyard, especially if the volunteer is turned around. They can be made of bright, kid-friendly colors that stand out.
However, vests are more expensive, and you will need to launder them from time to time if not every week. A good print shop can help you find ones that will best fit your needs.
4. Shirts
I wrote an entire series about providing t-shirts for your volunteers here. They’re my favorite way to identify volunteers. Your shirts can be bright, everyone wears them and are easy to identify.
However, shirts are the most expensive option on this list. Because the best pricing for shirts is in bulk, you’ll have to guess the sizes and hope you have enough. (I write about how to do that here.) It was not unusual for me to run out of XLs or Smalls and have a box full of mediums. My new volunteers would either have to wear a size too big or go without. Neither option is ideal.
Outside of price, many times my volunteers would not wear their shirts. They’d either forget to wear it, lose it, or make some other excuse. In these cases, you have a couple options.
You can give them another shirt (you may not get that back.)
You can tell them they can’t serve. (Now you have a hole in your volunteer work force.)
You can give them another identification device like a lanyard or name tag.
None of these are perfect. But I like the third one the best.
Whenever I ordered shirts, I wanted to get ones that were good quality. You want them hold up to multiple washes and don't want them to shrink. I also stayed away from more extreme designs and stuck with ones that my volunteers would feel proud to wear in public.
Shirts are a great advertisement for your ministry in and outside of your ministry. You want your volunteers to wear those shirts around.
No matter what you have your volunteers wear, you need to be consistent. Remember this is more than team building. It’s also about the safety of your kids. The best way to know if someone doesn’t belong is if they don’t look like anyone else. The identification makes it easy for guests to identify who they need to talk to and helps them feel safe leaving their precious, little ones with you.
