--- title: "Church Nursery Volunteer Schedule With Text Reminders, $9/mo" description: "Put Sunday and Wednesday nursery on a recurring schedule and text each volunteer before their shift. No app to install. $9/mo, 30-day free trial, no card." canonical_url: https://volunteerreminder.com/for/church-nursery md_url: https://volunteerreminder.com/for/church-nursery.md last_updated: 2026-09-30 --- # Church nursery volunteer schedule with text and email reminders **To keep a church nursery covered, put the rotation on a recurring schedule once and have each volunteer reminded by text and email before every shift. VolunteerReminder does that for $9 a month on Deluxe, for up to 60 volunteers and two reminders per shift, and nobody installs an app.** The coordinator enters Sunday nursery (and Wednesday, if you run it) one time. The reminders go out on their own after that. We build VolunteerReminder, so we are not a neutral party. Every competitor number below links to the vendor's own page, and further down we say which churches should use something else. [[TOC]] ## What does a church nursery volunteer schedule need? Fewer parts than most church software assumes. A nursery rotation is usually the same small group covering the same slots: Sunday morning, maybe a second service, maybe Wednesday night. The usual failure is simple: a volunteer forgets she's on this Sunday. So the schedule needs four things: - **Recurring shifts.** Sunday 9:00 a.m. nursery repeats every week, on the same Sunday of each month (the second Sunday, say), or on dates you pick. You enter the pattern once. - **Names on each shift.** If your church's child-safety policy calls for two adults in the room, put two names on the shift. Both get every reminder. If different pairs take different Sundays, give each pair its own schedule, such as first Sundays for one pair and third Sundays for another. - **A reminder that arrives.** By text for volunteers whose mobile number you've added, by email for anyone with an email address. A volunteer with both gets both. - **A plan for the empty slot.** Covered in its own section below. A printable nursery schedule template does the first two. It can't send the third. ## When should nursery volunteers get their reminder? Send two: one the day before and one the morning of. The day-before text gives a volunteer who can't make it time to let you know, so you can find someone else. The morning text catches the one who remembered on Tuesday and forgot by Sunday. On Deluxe you get two reminders per shift, and you set how far ahead each one goes in days, hours or minutes. For a 9:00 a.m. nursery, 1 day before and 2 hours before works. Reminders send in your church's local time. Texts go to volunteers whose mobile number you've added, and when you add a number you confirm that person agreed to get texts. Basic ($3 a month) sends one email reminder per shift, with no texting. Carrier registration for texting (A2P/10DLC) is handled at the platform level. Texts come from the platform's registered number, not a number of your own, and a volunteer who replies STOP is unsubscribed across the platform. ## What does texting the nursery team cost? Take a nursery of 12 volunteers, each serving twice a month, with two reminders per serve. That's 48 reminder texts a month. | Tool | Monthly price | How texting is billed | Fits a nursery-only rotation? | |---|---|---|---| | **VolunteerReminder Deluxe** | $9 flat | Scheduled shift reminders, two per shift, up to 60 volunteers. Not a bulk-text plan | Yes, standalone | | Planning Center (People texting) | Metered | $0.02 per 160-character credit plus $5/month for the number | It's the whole church system | | Confirmed.Church | $20 / $35 / $60 | 500 / 1,500 / 4,000 credits, plus a one-time $15 US 10DLC fee | Only with Planning Center Services | | SignUpGenius | $8.99 / $22.49 / $44.99 billed annually | 150 / 500 / 1,500 text invites and updates a month; each volunteer opts in separately | Sign-up sheets, not a standing rotation | Sources: [planningcenter.com/pricing](https://www.planningcenter.com/pricing), [confirmed.church](https://confirmed.church/), [signupgenius.com/pricing](https://www.signupgenius.com/pricing). Here's the honest part. At 12 volunteers, Planning Center People texting is cheaper on paper. A reminder with the time, the room and a note usually runs past 160 characters, so figure two credits a text: 96 credits, or $1.92, plus the $5 number, so about $6.92 a month. The difference is who sends them. People texts are written by a person and sent to a list; they are not generated from the Services volunteer schedule ([help.planningcenter.com](https://help.planningcenter.com/en/139182-send-a-text-to-a-list.html)). Services can text volunteers automatically, but over a carrier email gateway that is "only available through certain mobile carriers" ([help.planningcenter.com](https://help.planningcenter.com/en/144875-texting-in-planning-center.html)). So the real comparison is $9 for reminders that send from the schedule, or about $7 plus someone's Saturday evening. The full month-by-month math is on [what Planning Center texting costs](/alternatives/planning-center). ## What doesn't VolunteerReminder do in the nursery? Most of what a nursery needs besides reminders. We schedule and remind the volunteers. We don't touch the children's side. - **No check-in.** We don't print name tags, match parents to children, or run a kiosk. Keep Planning Center Check-Ins or whatever your church uses. - **No parent paging.** We text volunteers about their shifts. We don't page parents from the nursery during the service. - **No background checks.** Child-safety screening is a separate process and a separate kind of tool. Don't treat us as part of it. - **No ratio or two-adult enforcement.** You can put two names on a shift. Nothing checks that both came. - **No Planning Center sync.** If the rest of the church lives in Planning Center, the nursery roster lives in both places and someone keeps them in step. For a rotation that changes twice a year, that's a small job. If you want one system for check-in, giving, service planning and volunteer scheduling, keep Planning Center. If you run one-off sign-ups (VBS week, Easter overflow), a SignUpGenius sheet is the right shape. We're for the weekly rotation. ## What if a Sunday still has no one on it? That's two different problems. **Someone was scheduled and dropped.** On Pro ($19 a month, up to 150 volunteers), the substitute finder handles it by text. When a volunteer replies NO to a reminder, it texts the other people on that shift's roster in small batches, and the first one to reply YES takes the shift. The finder runs on reply-to-confirm texts, which are off unless we switch them on for your account, so email [info@volunteerreminder.com](mailto:info@volunteerreminder.com) before you count on it. It's not on Deluxe. **Nobody signed up in the first place.** Reminders can't fix an empty slot. If the problem is finding a Wednesday helper at all, our sister product [WhoCanBeThere](https://whocanbethere.com) is built for filling open slots. ## How do you set up a nursery rotation? Four steps, and volunteers do none of them: 1. Add the nursery volunteers under Contacts, with mobile numbers for the ones who want texts. 2. Create a schedule for Sunday nursery: type the job ("Sunday Nursery"), pick the pattern (weekly, a set Sunday of the month, or specific dates), set the time, and select the volunteers. Do the same for Wednesday if you run it. 3. On the Reminders page, set when the two reminders go out. 4. Verify your own mobile number once. Until you do, a new account sends email reminders but no texts. An account you create on the signup page sends real reminders from day one. To see one first, use **Send me a sample reminder** on the Reminders page. It sends you the exact message your volunteers get, and nobody on your roster is contacted. A trial account can send up to 200 texts in total. After that, texting pauses until you choose a plan, and email reminders keep going. For a 12-person nursery at 48 texts a month, that covers the 30 days. **[Start your free trial](/signup)**. 30 days, no credit card. Or compare [plans and pricing](/pricing) first. ## FAQ ### Can we keep Planning Center and use VolunteerReminder only for the nursery? Yes. Keep Planning Center for worship planning, giving and check-in, and use VolunteerReminder for the nursery rotation. There's no sync between them, so the nursery roster is entered in both. ### Do nursery volunteers need an app or an account? No. Reminders arrive as ordinary texts and emails. Nobody installs anything, creates an account or remembers a password. ### Can Sunday and Wednesday nursery run on one account? Yes. Set them up as two recurring schedules on the same account. Deluxe covers up to 60 volunteers across all of them, with two reminders per shift. ### How many texts can we send during the free trial? Up to 200 texts in total during the 30-day trial, then texting pauses until you pick a plan. Email reminders aren't capped. ### Can we change what the reminder says for the nursery? Partly. The main line is the same on every plan: your church's name, the job, and the date and time. You can add one sentence of up to 80 characters to every text reminder, such as which room or a door code. ### Is VolunteerReminder a replacement for a nursery sign-up sheet? No. A sign-up sheet collects names for open slots. We remind the people already on the schedule. For one-off events like VBS, a sheet is the better tool. ## Sitemap See the full [sitemap](https://volunteerreminder.com/sitemap.md) for every public page.