Learning
Back to Scout
Getting StartedSetting Up Your ChurchDashboard OverviewFeedback InboxCaring for Your TeamUnderstanding ScoresManaging Your RosterExpertise DiscoveryScout LensCheck-ins & Feedback

Getting Started with Scout

Scout is a volunteer intelligence platform that helps your church discover hidden expertise, track volunteer engagement, and care for the people who serve every week. This guide gives you a bird’s-eye view of how everything fits together.

What Scout Does

Most churches know who their volunteers are, but not what they can do. Scout changes that. It builds rich profiles of your volunteer team — their professional skills, personal interests, and serving preferences — and gives you tools to act on that information.

Scout has two main pieces:

  • The Staff Dashboard (web) — Where you manage volunteers, track engagement, discover expertise, and respond to feedback.
  • The Mobile App (iOS & Android) — Where volunteers check in on Sundays, build their profiles, and share feedback about their serving experience.
Scout dashboard overview — the home screen with KPI cards and activity feed
Scout dashboard overview — the home screen with KPI cards and activity feed

How It Works

The flow is simple:

  1. Volunteers join Scout using your church’s invite link (or through a Planning Center import). They download the mobile app, create an account, and build their profile.
  2. Volunteers check in each week when they serve. After their service, they can share quick feedback about how it went.
  3. Scout tracks engagement and health automatically. You’ll see who’s thriving, who might be burning out, and who has skills you didn’t know about.
  4. You act on what you learn — follow up with at-risk volunteers, match hidden expertise to ministry needs, and celebrate the wins.

Your First Steps

Here’s what to do after you log in for the first time:

  1. Set up your account profile in Settings → Profile. Add your name and avatar so your team knows who’s on the other end.
  2. Configure your church in Settings → General. Add your church name and upload your logo.
  3. Create your ministry teams in Settings → Teams. These are the serving areas volunteers can check into (Worship, Kids, Hospitality, etc.).
  4. Add your services in Settings → Services. These are the labels volunteers select when they check in (e.g., “9:00 AM,” “11:00 AM,” “Wednesday Night”).
  5. Get volunteers into Scout — share your invite link, print the QR code, or import from Planning Center. (See the next guide for details.)
Settings — General page where you configure your church name and logo
Settings — General page where you configure your church name and logo

What to Expect

Scout gets more valuable over time. In the first few weeks, you’re building the foundation — getting volunteers into the system and encouraging them to complete their profiles. After a month of check-ins, you’ll start seeing meaningful engagement trends and health patterns.

The more your team uses Scout, the richer your data becomes. Expertise discovery, risk detection, and Scout Lens all improve as volunteer profiles fill out and check-in history accumulates.