Background checks

Our organization has always paid for background checks for our mentors and general volunteers. We try to keep the cost low by screening them ourselves (we rent a LiveScan machine) so it ends up costing about $5/mentor instead of $18-$25 if they were sent offsite. While this works for the majority (90%+)of our volunteers since we do bulk recruitment at the beginning of each year, we occasionally have folks that join mid-year and we just reimburse them, but this is the exception. If you are able to rent a machine from another nonprofit who has one, I suggest doing this if you can afford it as it makes it very easy for people to volunteer (we get 350-400/year). You would have to get a staff member certified to LiveScan through your state's DOJ.

jora@oases.org

During a recent webinar on Recruitment and Screening Benchmarks from MENTOR's Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring, there was a discussion on screening processes to use when screening mentors. The screening standard includes the following benchmarks:

Mentor Screening
B.2.1 Mentor completes an application.
B.2.2 Mentor agrees to a one (calendar or school) year minimum commitment for the mentoring relationship.
B.2.3 Mentor agrees to participate in face-to-face meetings with his or her mentee that average one time
per week and one hour per meeting over the course of a calendar or school year.
B.2.4 Program conducts at least one face-to-face interview with mentor.
B.2.5 Program conducts a reference check (personal and/or professional) on mentor.
B.2.6 Program conducts a comprehensive criminal background check on adult mentor, including
searching a national criminal records database along with sex offender and child abuse registries.

Enhancements:
¨ E.2.1 Program utilizes national, fingerprint-based FBI criminal background checks (e.g., the SafetyNET
system operating under the auspices of the Child Protection Improvements Act, in cooperation
with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children).
¨ E.2.2 School-based programs assess mentor’s interest in maintaining contact with mentee during the summer
months following the close of the school year and offer assistance with maintaining contact.

Does your program follow the benchmarks? Are there challenges that you are facing in applying the benchmarks and enhancements in your program?