When a volunteer declines a scheduling request, finding a replacement has always fallen on the team leader, even in churches where the expectation may be for the volunteers to find their own replacements.
Until now, volunteers would find their replacement, and then enter in their replacement in the decline reason field, and the team leader would then need to go into Planning Center and manually make those changes, requiring a lot of extra manual work.
Today, all of that changes.
We’re excited to introduce a brand new feature for your teams, volunteer replacements.
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How it works
When you enable volunteer replacements from the team settings, declining volunteers will be prompted to choose their own replacement from a list of available volunteers that are eligible to fill that role. Leaders stay informed without having to drive the process.
How to enable
In the team settings, navigate to the rescheduling declines section, turn on volunteer replacements.
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What’s the volunteer flow
When a team member declines, instead of the decline completing right away, they're taken to a replacement selection screen:
A filtered list of eligible teammates who share the same position
Tap a teammate to select them as your replacement
Before the decline is finalized, there's one required step: the volunteer must check a confirmation box stating "I've confirmed with [Name] that they can cover this."
This checkbox is required and cannot be skipped. it ensures the conversation has already happened before the replacement is locked in. Once confirmed, the replacement is automatically added to the plan and the original volunteer's decline is finalized.
A note for admins: Since the flow assumes volunteers have already coordinated with their replacement before declining, we recommend communicating that expectation to your team before enabling this setting. The confirmation checkbox enforces it in the app, but a little upfront training goes a long way.
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Once confirmed, the replacement is automatically added to the plan as confirmed and the original volunteer's decline is finalized.
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What the replacement sees
The person asked to cover receives a push notification and email letting them know they've been confirmed to fill the role and will see the following message:
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What if no one is available?
If the team member list comes back empty due to conflicts, the flow falls back to manually reschedule behavior: a needed position is created and the leader is notified.
The volunteer sees: "No available teammates were found. Your team leader has been notified."
Leader experience
Leaders stay in the loop without having to drive the process:
Replacement confirmed: Leaders receive a notification based on their existing notification preferences
No replacement found: Leaders are notified and a needed position is created, same as today
Where is this accessible
Volunteer replacements are available everywhere volunteers already decline: on the web, in the Services mobile app, and in both Church Center App and Church Center web.
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Why this matters
Many churches have a culture where volunteers are accountable for their own absence but until now, Planning Center didn’t have a great way to support that. With the volunteer replacements feature, this gives volunteers a path to take ownership before a leader gets pulled in, and keeps the process in the hands of the volunteer instead of within the decline reason field.
Try it out
Head to any team's settings page and look for the updated rescheduling declines section to enable volunteer replacements for your team.
-💚 Team Services