“Billy Beane, general manager of Major League Baseball's Oakland A's and protagonist of Michael Lewis's book, Moneyball, had a problem: how to win in the Major Leagues with a budget that's smaller than that of nearly every other team. Conventional wisdom long held that big name, highly athletic hitters and young pitchers with rocket arms were the ticket to success. But Beane and his staff, buoyed by massive amounts of carefully interpreted statistical data, believed that wins could be had by more affordable methods such as hitters with high on-base percentage and pitchers who get lots of ground outs. Given this information and a tight budget, Beane defied tradition and his own scouting department to build winning teams of young affordable players and inexpensive castoff veterans.”

Similarly, “Jim Collins asked the question, ‘Can a good company become a great company and if so, how?’ In Good to Great Collins …concludes that it is possible, but finds there are no silver bullets. Collins and his team of researchers began their quest by sorting through a list of 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They finally settled on 11…and discovered common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of corporate success. Making the transition from good to great doesn't require a high-profile CEO, the latest technology, innovative change management, or even a fine-tuned business strategy. At the heart of those rare and truly great companies was a corporate culture that rigorously found and promoted disciplined people to think and act in a disciplined manner.”

Like Lewis and Collins, Young Life has learned some vital information, not about how to create a winning baseball team, or develop the highest performing for-profit company, but the secret to our strongest Young Life area’s success. The information below comes from Young Life’s research about our mission. How Do They Do It? was a follow up to the 100X Project and the Oxford Study, which discovered that the most significant factor impacting Young Life’s direct ministry is the volunteer leader per staff ratio.  These results operate across every division as well as urban, suburban, and small town ministries.   The more leaders an area has per paid staff the stronger their ministry is.

How Do They Do It? identified top Area Directors in the mission who had at least thirteen volunteer leaders for every full time staff person (the majority interviewed had more than twenty volunteer leaders per staff).  These area directors responded to four questions:

• What kind of people does your area recruit to be a volunteer?

• How does your area train volunteers?

• How does your area place and equip volunteers?

• What does your area do to sustain volunteers?

The results of the project are now arranged under the categories of: Recruit, Train, Place, Equip, and Sustain.