A small business owner, a lawyer, and a manager walk into a social hall and see that Shalosh Seudos has not been cleaned up…
The small business owner knows that the buck stops here, so he makes a public request for volunteers, and when few show up, he does it himself.
The lawyer calls for a membership meeting to propose that all members are required to help in Shul chores.
The manager goes to a few members, explains the problem and asks them to make a small time commitment to help clean up.
Although each of these means may be successful in the effort to get shul things done, the manager has accomplished much more. The members who do volunteer are doing a chesed for the Shul as opposed to a requirement in the lawyer’s scenario, or often not doing anything in the case of the small business owner. In addition, when people contribute their time to the Shul they feel more connected, and as a result get much more out of their Shul experience.
The difficulty with recruiting volunteers is that you have to make the time to ask people, come up with the appropriate pitch, deal with rejection, and sometimes perform chesed-based arm-twisting. A motivation to get over these hurdles is to know that when you meet with success, you will have performed a much greater deed.