VOLUNTEERISM

Resources for Screening Volunteers

Books

The following titles are available through the Nonprofit Risk Management Center's Web site:

Staff Screening Tool Kit: Building a Strong Foundation

ALSO SEE: Charities Find Ways to Screen Volunteers Despite Insufficient Funds, Time

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)

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.