Are there 33.3 million church volunteers in the US?

I learned from a From Belief To Commitment: the Community Service Activities and Finances of Religious Congregations in the United States that 58% of churches have experienced moderate to substantial increases in the number of volunteers.

Target market

I’m doing research on my target market (ministry practitioners, leaders or volunteers) for Plaid. After being a pastor for 9 years, I have a pretty good sense of the emotional description of the people who serve in weekly ministry. They are exceptional people and they inspire me to create a great product. They just deserve something really great to help them manage their ministry and eliminate the daunting stress of it.

How many ministry practitioners are there in weekly ministry?

I have not found a good answer to this question. Barna reports that in 2006 16% of all US adults volunteer at church. According to the US Census there are 208.1 million civilians 18 years old and older.

Using those figures, there are 33,296,000 church volunteers.

It is hard to find how many churches exist in the US. One report puts the number of congregations at 325,000. But if I added up the total number of churches from The Association of Religion Data Archives I get 267,864. For my purposes, I will make the following calculations using the larger number.

So there are 33.3 million volunteers and 325,000 churches. If this is so, then each church has a volunteer staff of 102. According to a comprehensive Megachurch study, the average mega church of 2000 has 284 volunteers serving each Sunday.

My target market is primarily ministry leaders (both paid and unpaid). I am safe saying that 1% or 332,960 volunteers fit into my target market. Other ARDA reports claim that 80% of churches have either no or a single full-time pastor. And 98% have fewer than no or a sin part-time staff.

If that’s the case then I can add 260,000 single or part-time pastors to my volunteer target market for a total of 592,960.

So who of the 592,960 would pay for Plaid

The driest tinder will be the 260,000 solo full-time pastors and their part-time staff.

Not all of the 332,960 leaders would “pay” for Plaid. They will use a free version of Plaid to manage small contact lists (how many contacts the FREE version of Plaid will allow has not been determined): Sunday School and Confirmation teachers, MOPS table facilitators, and small group leaders.

The next driest tinder is leaders of small ministry teams:

• Youth/student ministry
• Children’s ministry
• Campus/college ministry
• Single’s ministry

This works out great because Plaid is best used by those who serve people that thrive on digital communications. (Plaid’s suppports US Postal Addresses only to facilitate mapping, but really will not support bulk mailing or printing Avery labels. It will however allow users to use all kinds of digital communications: email, IM and eventually VoIP (or Flash video).

So how many of the 332,960 meet this requirement? Lets guess 60% or 199,776 for a total target market for Plaid of 459,776. What do you think? Is one-half million a good working number? High? Low? If you are a demographic wonk and can lead me to better numbers. Please, please add your two cents.

The final “driest tinder” is church planters. The best estimates claim there are 1,300 new churches are planted annually. Let multiple that by 3 years for a total of at most 3,900 church planters in the US.

What do you think? Is one-half million a good working number? High? Low? If you are a demographic wonk and can lead me to better numbers. Please, please add your two cents.

0 comments | Apr 26, 01:46 | by Tim Bednar plaid marketing

If you enjoyed this article, Subscribe to Turtle Interactive by Email and get more like this sent directly to your inbox. Or hire Tim Bednar for your next project.