Working with volunteers: recruiting, safety and recognition

Working with volunteers well means planning real roles, recruiting and screening people in proportion to the risk, briefing and supervising them, keeping everyone safe, recording their time honestly and thanking them. Done well, volunteers extend what your staff can do. Done badly, they cost staff time, leave volunteers frustrated and can put the people you serve at risk.

This guide is for NGO staff who coordinate volunteers, and for volunteers who want to know what a well-run drive looks like. It follows the cycle in order: planning, recruiting and screening, briefing, safety, supervision, hours, recognition and data.

Plan the roles before you recruit

Start from what the community and your programme need, not from the number of people who want to help. For each task, ask what volunteers can do safely without special training, how much staff time supervision will take, and whether paid staff or local people would do it better.

A short role description for each task saves trouble later:

Be wary of roles built around the volunteer’s experience rather than the community’s need. A one-day visit to a children’s home “to play with the kids” is the classic example of voluntourism: it unsettles children and adds little.

Recruiting and screening

Describe each drive honestly: what volunteers will do, where, when, for how long, and the minimum age. Recruit fairly, without excluding anyone because of caste, religion, gender or disability, and make reasonable adjustments so that more people can take part.

Volunteering on SocioStory is for adults, 18 or over on the day of the drive. If you list drives on SocioStory, volunteers come to you: NGOs can’t search or browse volunteers, and see only the roster for their own drive. If your own programmes involve under-18s, for example a school club, they are children in law, and your child protection policy applies to them in full.

Match the checks to the risk:

Rule 3 of the POCSO Rules, 2020 requires institutions that house children or are in regular contact with them to carry out periodic police verification and background checks of their staff. Apply the same standard to volunteers who come back regularly to work with children. Our guide to child protection and safeguarding has the full picture.

Induction, briefing and the code of conduct

Regular volunteers need an induction: what your organisation does, how the programme works, your safeguarding policy and code of conduct, how you handle personal data, and who to tell if something worries them.

For a one-off drive, a five-minute briefing at the start covers the essentials:

1. who the coordinator is, and the emergency contact;
2. what you are doing, where and until when, and where the water, shade, first aid and toilets are;
3. the two-adult rule, and asking before any photo;
4. what to do if something feels wrong: tell a coordinator straight away;
5. how attendance is recorded.

A code of conduct sets out the rules everyone agrees to. SocioStory’s code of conduct is one model: turn up or cancel in good time; check in only for yourself; follow the briefing; never be alone with a child or a vulnerable adult; ask before taking a photo; treat everyone with respect; keep what you learn private; no alcohol or drugs; and don’t accept money or gifts from the people a drive is for.

Safety on the day

Every drive needs a safety plan: a briefing, first aid on hand and a named emergency contact, plus the points that matter for that kind of drive.

• Heat and water: plan for shade, water and rest breaks, and stop anyone working unsafely.
• Sharp or unknown objects: volunteers never pick up glass, needles or anything they don’t recognise with bare hands.
• Blood donation camps: run them only with a licensed blood centre whose staff do all the medical work. Donors must be 18 to 65, and paying donors is illegal.
• Children and vulnerable adults: the two-adult rule, no private contact, no gifts or money, and staff, not volunteers, handle personal care.
• Stopping: stop a drive if the site becomes unsafe, someone is hurt, the two-adult rule can’t be kept or anyone is being harassed. A stopped drive is a good decision, not a failure.

Make sure everyone knows the emergency numbers: 112 for police, fire and ambulance, 1098 for a child at risk, and 181, the women’s helpline. Check whether your insurance covers volunteers as well as staff, both for accidents and for harm to others: many policies cover only employees.

Supervision, and when something worries someone

A named coordinator should be there from start to finish, receiving volunteers, keeping a head count and being the person anyone can go to. If a volunteer sees something worrying, or someone tells them they are being harmed, the steps are the same as for staff: call 112 or 1098 if anyone is in immediate danger, tell the coordinator or safeguarding lead straight away, write down what they saw or heard, and never investigate or confront anyone. Suspected sexual abuse of a child must be reported to the police under Section 19 of the POCSO Act.

Volunteers are protected too. The POSH Act counts people working on a voluntary basis as employees, so a volunteer who is sexually harassed can complain to your Internal Committee, and a complaint against a volunteer goes through the same process: see POSH for NGOs.

Recording hours honestly

Volunteers’ hours end up on certificates, college records and CSR reports, so they must be real. Record attendance from check-in and check-out, have the coordinator confirm the roster soon after the drive, and never mark someone present who wasn’t there or add time they didn’t give. If you find a mistake, add a correcting entry rather than quietly editing the record, so that the history stays honest.

Volunteers are unpaid. Paying back genuine expenses, such as travel or a meal, is fine, but a regular “stipend” for fixed hours under your direction can make the relationship look like employment: see the labour codes for NGOs.

Recognition and keeping volunteers

• Thank people promptly, and tell them what the drive achieved: the rubbish cleared, the books sorted, the donors registered.
• Give certificates that state the drive, the date and the real hours.
• Respect their time: start and finish when you said you would.
• Ask for feedback, and act on it.
• Offer a next step: a regular role, a lead role or a different cause.

A volunteer who comes back, knows the routine and can be relied on is worth far more than a crowd that comes once.

Volunteers’ data and photos

Collect only what you need: a name, contact details and an emergency contact, and for regular roles, what your checks require. Use it only for the activity people signed up for. Don’t add volunteers to other WhatsApp groups or mailing lists without asking, never pass their details to a company or another organisation, and delete them when you no longer need them. Volunteers’ photos need their consent, and the photos volunteers take of the people you serve follow your rules: see consent, photos and dignity and data protection for NGOs.

Common mistakes

• Recruiting before the roles are planned, or more people than the work needs.
• Skipping the briefing because people are late.
• Leaving a volunteer alone with a child “for a minute”.
• Accepting under-18s on drives meant for adults.
• Signing off hours that weren’t given, as a favour.
• Sharing volunteer lists with partners or sponsors.

The Academy’s Volunteering well course prepares volunteers for their first drive, and Safeguarding for Centre leaders covers the safety rules in depth.