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The volunteer evidence checklist
What any organisation with volunteers should be able to produce on request — and how long it would take you today.
Screening, induction and supervision are the parts of a volunteer program that almost everybody does and almost nobody can evidence quickly. Most organisations are already doing all three. The hard part is proving it on a Tuesday afternoon when a funder, an insurer or a board member asks — because the evidence is usually spread across a spreadsheet, an inbox, a filing cabinet and somebody's memory.
Answer honestly: how long would each one take you today, with the systems you actually have. The pattern across the twelve is more useful than any single answer.
Your details — optional, and only used to label your PDF
Answer the twelve questions below and a readiness score will appear here. It is a prompt for a conversation, not a rating anybody official recognises.
The twelve
Notes — what we'll do about it
Why this matters
There are two reasons to be able to show this quickly. The first depends on your sector.
Where the law requires it
- Aged care. Volunteers and workers generally need a current police certificate or an NDIS worker screening check, and the provider needs to be able to show it. These rules have been changing, so check the current position.
- Working with children. Blue Cards in Queensland and Working with Children Checks elsewhere come with record keeping duties for the organisation. The companion compliance checklist goes into this in more detail.
- Work health and safety. Volunteers are generally treated as workers under WHS laws, so organisations with business duties need to keep them safe, which includes training and instruction. Dated induction records are how you show it.
Rules differ by state and sector, so confirm yours with your regulator.
Where it protects you
Even where no law names it, funders, insurers and boards often expect you to be able to show it. For registered charities, the ACNC's Governance Standards don't set out specific safeguarding rules, but they do require compliance with the law and care and diligence, and screening and record keeping are widely treated as good governance practice.
Who tends to ask
Most organisations go years without being asked for any of this, which is exactly why it drifts. When the question does come it arrives with a deadline attached, and from one of four directions. What each of them wants is substantially the same thing, which is the good news: getting ready for one gets you ready for all of them.
| Who asks | When it usually comes up | What they actually want |
|---|---|---|
| A funder | At acquittal, or in the next application | Evidence that the people delivering the funded work were screened, inducted and supported — usually at short notice, and usually for a period that has already finished. |
| An insurer | At renewal, and again after any claim | Renewals and claims are both moments where “we do that” turns out not to be the same as showing it. A dated register and dated induction records are the two that come up most. |
| Your board | Whenever somebody new joins it and starts asking | New directors ask the questions everybody else stopped asking years ago, and they ask them in writing. This is the friendliest version of the question, and the best time to find the gaps. |
| After something goes wrong | Immediately, and in writing | The one nobody plans for. What matters then is not whether you had a policy but whether you can show what was done, by whom and when — for a person who may have left since. |
Why quick access matters
- Requests come with a deadline. Funders, insurers and regulators rarely give weeks. An answer that takes a day or more is a day or more taken from your volunteers.
- A gap found today is a fix. A gap found during a review, or after an incident, is a finding.
- Evidence protects people. A dated record shows a volunteer was screened and supported, which protects them, the people they work with and your organisation.
- It tends to land on the same person. The coordinator gets pulled away from volunteers to piece it together, and it happens again at the next renewal, acquittal or review.
- It builds trust. Answering quickly and calmly tells funders, insurers and boards that the program is well run.
What good looks like
- One register, not four. Every check for every volunteer in a single place, with expiry dates that are read by something rather than remembered by someone.
- Expiry that chases you. A check that lapses without anybody being told is the most common gap in this whole area, and it is entirely preventable.
- Induction tracked per role and per person, with dates. "Everyone did the induction" is a claim; a dated per-person record is evidence.
- Supervision that leaves a record. A wellbeing conversation nobody wrote down did not happen, as far as any review is concerned — and the volunteer gets no benefit from it either.
- Continuity when people leave. Concerns, checks and supervision relationships should survive the departure of whoever was holding them.
- A record of who looked at what. Emergency contacts and health information should be hard to open, and should leave a trace when they are.
This checklist is a practical prompt, not legal advice, and it does not cover every obligation that may apply to your organisation. The score is a self-assessment aid with no official standing. The questions are the ones funders, insurers and boards ask most often about volunteer programs. If your organisation works with children or young people, there is a companion compliance checklist written against the child safe standards, which asks for more. Nothing you type here is sent anywhere or stored — it stays in your browser until you close the page. Prepared by The Good Crew, October 2026. Free to copy and share.