Charities Criticized for Falling Short When Screening Potential Volunteers

Many social-service charities do not do nearly enough to screen volunteers, exposing the people they serve to potential victimization and the organizations themselves to liability, a new report says.

The report, released by the National Center for Victims of Crime, in Washington, was paid for by a grant from ChoicePoint, a Georgia company that conducts background checks.

ChoicePoint issued its own accompanying report revealing that of the 3.7 million screenings it had conducted of potential charity volunteers or employees from 2002 to 2007, more than 189,000 people had at least one criminal conviction. Among the crimes: 651 murder convictions. The report, called “The Importance of Background Screening for Nonprofits: An Updated Briefing,” goes on to demonstrate how the company’s own screening services uncover criminal records otherwise overlooked.

Mary Lou Leary, executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime, downplayed the connection between the two reports. Her organization’s report, called “Who’s Lending a Hand: A National Survey of Nonprofit Volunteer Screening Practices,” is based on a survey conducted by the center with help from the University of Baltimore. It was paid for with a $70,000 grant from ChoicePoint.

The survey did reveal what Ms. Leary called a “troubling lack of adequate screening practices,” she says, but much of what charities can do to do a better job does not include hiring a company like ChoicePoint.

She says charities screening volunteers can conduct more in-depth interviews, call references, and do their own background checks with resources available on the Internet or directly through local law-enforcement offices and the FBI.

The center’s survey included 517 social-service groups around the country. It found that 60 of the organizations, or 12 percent, do not screen volunteers at all, citing, among other reasons, the expense and the potential to offend people.

Among the groups that do screen volunteers, most do so only through interviews, reference calls, and limited criminal checks. Of the groups that conduct a criminal records check, for example, 30 percent do not also check sex-offender registries and more than half do not also submit names to child protective services.

More results of the survey and the full report, “Who’s Lending a Hand?” are available online, as is ChoicePoint’s report.