Interviewing and Screening Volunteers

Books on this topic

Articles and excerpts on this topic:

• Assessing and Interviewing Volunteers, tips from Volunteering Tasmania
• Before Interviewing Volunteers, tip sheet from Ohio State 4-H
• Charities Find Ways to Screen Volunteers Despite Insufficient Funds, Time
  from The Chronicle of Philanthropy
• Disposition Explanations from VolunteerScreening.com
• Guidelines for Using Questions in Conversation from An Asset Builder’s
  Guide to Training Peer Helpers
• Gut Feelings and Intuition from Beyond Police Checks

• How to Select the Best Among Prospective Volunteers, Voluntary Sector Knowledge Network (Canada)

• Intuition or Indigestion? by Andy Fryar, Charity Channel’s Volunteer Management Review (2003)
• Methods of Screening Potential Volunteers, by Monika Penner,
  CharityVillage
• Saying No by Saying Yes, or How to Turn Volunteers Down in a Positive Way by Nan Hawthorne, Charity Channel’s Volunteer Management Review (2005)
• Screening and CRB Checks from Volunteering England
• Screening and Selecting Volunteers: Powerful Ambassadors or
  Massive Headaches? , by Joe Willmore from Executive Update
• Screening ‘In’ by Nan Hawthorne, Charity Channel’s Volunteer Management Review (2002)
• Step 2: Screening by Charles Tremper and Gwynne Kostin
• The Volunteer Application Form, from Proof Positive
• Volunteer Screening Model manual from SportSafe (BC)

Web sites with useful articles on this topic:

Background Checks on Volunteers Who Work with Children
http://www.state.oh.us/ohiogcsc/best_practices.htm
Information on bill in Ohio that addresses background checks and fingerprinting of volunteers who work with children.

EnVision
http://envision.ca/templates/resources.asp?ID=3263
Tips for interviewing potential employees or volunteers from the Community Services Council of Newfoundland and Labrador

Interviewing Volunteers

http://www.val.org.uk/PDF%20Files/VOLUNTEERING/
Interviewing%20Volunteers.pdf

10 page booklet from Voluntary Action-Leeds (UK)

MENTOR: Components of Volunteer Screening
http://www.mentoring.org/program_staff/screening/components
_of_volunteer_screening.php
Detailed description of the interviewing and screening process, including reference and background checks.

National Recreation and Park Association Guidelines for Background Checks
http://www.nrpa.org/content/default.aspx?documentId=3807
National recommendations for conducting comprehensive background checks and screenings for volunteers and staff.

Pandora's Box
http://www.prevent-abuse-now.com/index.htm
All about preventing child sexual abuse, with a complete section on US national fingerprint check legislation and resources.

Strategy for Interviewing Volunteers 
http://www.nald.ca/fulltext/volnteen/page8.htm
Sample questions and other suggestions (keep scrolling through the pages) from Literacy Partners of Manitoba

Volunteer Canada's Safe Steps Screening Program
http://www.volunteer.ca/volcan/eng/content/screening/safe-steps.php?display=

Volunteer Canada's Safe Steps Screening Program provides an easy-to-use method for organizations to ensure that the people they serve are safe. This page also links to information on laws and screening, a screening Q&A, and other resources.

Volunteer Interviewing Scenarios
http://www.casanet.org/programmanagement/volunteermanage/vlinscen.htm Written by Steve McCurley for CASA

Also available as a PDF at: http://nationalserviceresources.org/filemanager/
download/708/roleplay_interviews.pdf

Volunteer Management FAQs 

Site maintained by Carter MacNamara. Scroll to sections on Screening Volunteers and Selecting ("Hiring") Volunteers

Volunteer Screening
http://www.casanet.org/program-management/volunteer-manage/
Scroll down to detailed volunteer screening section on the CASA site

Volunteer Screening Blog
http://www.volunteerscreening.org/blog.html
This blog, on the site of a screening service, discusses a variety of issues relating to background checks and interviewing volunteers, using real-life situations.

VolunteerSelect
http://www.volunteerselect.com/
Commercial service for conducting background checks on volunteers that includes a "best practices" resource section.

What Is Screening?
http://www.volunteer.ca/volcan/eng/content/
screening/screening.php?display=4,0

Excellent overview of the rationale for and steps of effective volunteer screening from Volunteer Canada.  Includes "Screening in Faith" PDF for faith communities.

Relevant Hot Topic essays?

Unskilled vs. Differently Skilled: Maximize Volunteer Differences – Nov ‘00

12/21/2007

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