Background check services for nonprofits: volunteer screening, and how it differs from background check services for small businesses

What each provider publishes about its own price

How a nonprofit should set up screening

1. Define access categories, not job titles. Unsupervised contact with minors or vulnerable adults, handling money, driving others, and everything else. Screen by category and apply the same standard to staff, volunteers and contractors in the same category.
2. Check whether your state has a volunteer channel. Several states operate dedicated volunteer or childcare screening channels, sometimes fingerprint-based and sometimes at reduced cost. Those can be both cheaper and more authoritative than a commercial search, so check before you buy.
3. Get the FCRA paperwork right from the first volunteer. A standalone written disclosure, written authorisation before the report is ordered, and the pre-adverse and adverse action sequence if you decline somebody. None of that softens because the role is unpaid.
4. Decide who decides, and how often you rescreen. The person who recruited a volunteer should not be the person adjudicating their report. Set a rescreening interval in the policy, because a check at recruitment says nothing about somebody five years later.

What to actually run

For roles with unsupervised access to minors: an identity and address trace, county criminal searches across the address history it returns, a national database sweep as a pointer rather than an answer, and a sex offender registry search. Add a motor vehicle record where the person transports anybody. That is a genuine safeguarding check and it is affordable at the published entry prices in this record.

Resist the temptation to buy the deepest package for everybody. An unnecessary search costs money the organisation does not have and produces information you then have to store and protect lawfully, which small organisations with shared drives are consistently bad at.

Cost, and the providers that publish one

Of the twenty-five providers in this record, five publish a price at all. Advertised entry packages run from $29.00 to $39.99 a report with a median of $29.99, and those published-price providers are generally the practical option for an organisation screening tens rather than thousands of people. The twenty that quote sell configured programmes against volume, which a nonprofit rarely has.

Two of the five published figures are for social media screening rather than criminal search, which is worth catching before assuming the cheapest number in the table is a safeguarding check. It is not.

The policy is the deliverable

Say which roles require screening and why, what disqualifies in terms of the relationship between an offence and the role rather than as a blanket rule, who adjudicates, how often screening repeats, and how records are stored and who may see them. A written policy applied consistently is both the fairest approach and the strongest position if a decision is ever challenged.

It also solves the practical problem nonprofits actually have, which is that volunteers are recruited by people who know them. A written standard applied to everybody removes the awkwardness of appearing to single somebody out, because nobody is being singled out.

Questions buyers ask before they order

Do we have to follow the FCRA for volunteers?

Yes, where you obtain a consumer report about them through a consumer reporting agency. The standalone disclosure, written authorisation and adverse action sequence apply regardless of whether anybody is paid.

What does volunteer screening cost?

Among providers that publish a rate, entry packages run $29.00 to $39.99 a report, median $29.99. Some states run dedicated volunteer channels that can be cheaper and more authoritative, so check yours first.

Should every volunteer be screened?

Screen by access category rather than by status. Unsupervised contact with minors or vulnerable adults, handling money and driving others are the categories that justify it.

Who should adjudicate a report?

Not the person who recruited the volunteer. Name the decision-maker in the policy so the judgement is separated from the relationship.

Screening rules by state