When Ministry Staff Want to Volunteer

5 hours ago

3 min read

DOL Guidance on Staff Who Volunteer for Their Ministry

Why it matters for UMC churches and ministries:

Many United Methodist congregations and affiliated ministries rely on staff members who give extra time to the organization they work for. An administrative assistant helps serve a community meal. A youth ministry intern joins a weekend mission trip. A music director volunteers for a fundraiser. These are acts of generosity, but federal wage-and-hour law may also treat them as paid work.

On September 7, 2026, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division issued Opinion Letter FLSA2026-12. It addresses when employees of a nonprofit may volunteer for their employer. The letter involved a service-dog organization, but the Division noted that it has long applied the same principles to religious and charitable organizations, so churches and related ministries should pay attention.

The three conditions:

According to the Division, an employee may volunteer for their nonprofit employer when all of the following are true:

1. The service is freely offered. There is no pressure, whether stated or implied.

2. There is no expectation of pay.

3. The work is different from what the person is employed to do. It cannot be the same as, or similar to, their paid duties.

An employee cannot be a paid worker and an unpaid volunteer for the same type of work. If the “volunteer” work looks like the paid job, the Division sees it as part of the employment relationship, and the hours may need to be paid. An employee also cannot waive the right to pay by calling the work volunteering.

Look at duties, not titles.

The “same or similar” question turns on what a person actually does, not what their job title says. The Division said this is a case-by-case judgment and suggested the federal O*NET occupational database as a reference for comparing paid and volunteer roles.

In the letter, veterinarians and directors could volunteer as caretakers for young dogs because that work differed from their regular duties. Trainers could not, because the volunteer activity overlapped with the training they were hired to do. The Division stressed that these conclusions rested on assumed facts, and different facts could lead to a different result.

Exempt status raises different concerns.

Salaried, exempt employees are not automatically free to volunteer. The same test applies. For nonexempt staff, time that counts as work must be paid and included in overtime calculations. For exempt staff, significant extra work can raise questions about whether their primary duties still support the exemption.

Examples:

An administrative assistant can choose to volunteer to serve food at a community meal if organizing the meal was not part of the assistant’s paid responsibilities and the service is freely offered with no expectation of pay.
A youth ministry intern can volunteer for a general mission trip but cannot serve as a volunteer chaperone, as it is too similar to the intern’s regular job duties.
A music director can volunteer as an usher at a church fundraiser. But if the same music director played piano for the fundraiser, that would become part of the music director’s paid work.

Employees who are ineligible to volunteer may still help with community meals, mission trips, or fundraisers. But employers need to treat that service as part of their paid work.

Questions to ask in your congregation or ministry:

Which staff members regularly give unpaid time beyond their job descriptions?
Is that time spent on tasks similar to their paid work, such as a paid children’s ministry coordinator “volunteering” at a children’s event?
Is there any expectation, even an unspoken one, that staff will help out beyond their job duties?
Do your job descriptions accurately reflect what people actually do?

What to do now:

Take stock of the ways employees volunteer in your ministry. Pay particular attention to mission trips, fundraisers, community meals, children’s and youth activities, and other programs where staff members lend a hand outside their regular schedules. And remember, state wage-and-hour laws can add extra requirements. If the volunteer role overlaps with an employee's paid responsibilities, the safer assumption is that the time should be treated as work unless qualified legal advisors conclude otherwise.