Bringing dozens, even hundreds, of volunteers through your organization’s doors every year puts it at a risk of loss, damage or harm to your clientele. But volunteer managers can also manage the amount of risk the non-profit is subjected to by following a few steps.

First, identify each volunteer position and its associated level of risk. Your organization chart should have all positions clarified, but if not, you can easily add to it. Think about risk in the amount of contact the position has with confidential information, money or financial information or with vulnerable populations.

• Low risk means no contact.
• Medium risk means supervised contact with vulnerable persons, and no contact with confidential information or money.
• High risk means unsupervised contact with vulnerable populations and/or contact with confidential information and/or money.

Then, prepare job descriptions that establish guidelines and standards of behavior for each position. Make sure the role’s title, responsibilities and duties are clear. Establish goals, as well as boundaries. Mention any qualifications or skills required, as well as the amount of time needed to successfully fill the position.

Each job description should include any training required, supervision required or provided, conditions such as driving, lifting or standing, and tasks it takes to meet the responsibilities.

Finally, establish standards for volunteer screening, according to the level of risk for each position. Low-risk volunteers may simply need an identity check to make sure they are who they say they are. Medium risk would include the identity check as well as require a criminal background check, including sex offender status. High risk would include a top-level identity, criminal background, sex offender and credit check.

It’s important to note when volunteers change positions or move around on the fly. Be cautious about allowing low-risk volunteers to switch into a high-risk role—even for a day—without conducting a deeper background check.

The alternative is to conduct the highest-level volunteer screening on all potential volunteers. Then, you don’t have to worry about a registered sex offender or convicted drug dealer having contact with children, the elderly or the vulnerable.

Tags: Non Profit Risk Management, volunteer screening

This entry was posted on Friday, June 7th, 2013 at and is filed under Screening & Background Checks, Volunteer Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.