Resources for Screening Volunteers
August 8, 2002 | Read Time: 1 minute
VOLUNTEERISM
Books
The following titles are available through the Nonprofit Risk Management Center’s Web site:
Staff Screening Tool Kit: Building a Strong Foundation
Through Careful Staffing, by John C. Patterson (1998, $30)
No Surprises: Harmonizing Risk and Reward in Volunteer Management, Second Edition, by Melanie L. Herman and Peggy M. Jackson (2001, $15)
The Season of Hope: A Risk Management Guide for Youth-Serving Nonprofits, by Barbara B. Oliver and John C. Patterson (2002, $30)
Organizations and Services:
The Association for Volunteer Administration offers an assessment tool, originally developed by a nonprofit organization in Richmond, Va., that helps organizations analyze volunteer jobs on a task-by-task basis in order to understand the types and degrees of risk involved in each.
The Nonprofit Risk Management Center has developed a free online tutorial walks users through a series of questions designed to identify their organization’s vulnerabilities and strengths in terms of how it protects its clients from potentially harmful volunteers . The center’s Web site also offers other resources, including several relevant publications, some available for download at no charge.
VolunteerSelect, a service created by the Atlanta security company ChoicePoint, can provide charities with low-cost background checks using public records as well as ChoicePoint’s proprietary databases.
Service Leader offers several articles on screening and managing volunteers for both on-site and online (“virtual”) volunteers, culled from a variety of sources.
