A humanitarian project by any non-profit organization will carry out a massive impact. For this, the volunteers play an important role. They offer selfless work and dedication to the organizations to propagate their project on the success scale.
Volunteers have passion, abilities, skills, or kind hearts to serve humanity. Charity organizations, non-profit companies, or any other service department takes volunteers to help them with their projects. However, without proper clarification about their roles and duties, their work might not be impactful. For this purpose, the highly recommended volunteer agreement is signed.
What is the Volunteer Agreement?
A volunteer arrangement is the core of an organization's working relationship with its volunteers. A volunteer arrangement sets out the companies’ requirements in terms of duration, participation, training, and policies. A volunteer is obligated to follow all the guidelines provided by the company in the agreement.
Organizations can sign up volunteers to assist with different charity programs such as fundraising, accounting, or other day-to-day activities. The volunteering contract builds a relation of trust and respect between the volunteer and the organization. It provides a constant reminder for both volunteers and the organization for their deals, responsibility, and duties.
This is a flexible agreement, and a predetermined work routine can effectively be reconstrued in the event of a conflict or emergency. The agreement falls under non-disclosure and confidentiality clauses due to the sensitive information of the hiring party. However, the document does not hold any legal binding. It can be terminated by either party at any time.
What is Volunteer Agreement Used For?
Applications will be flooded on the notice of any reputable organization for the recruitment of volunteers. Sadly, most of the people, after signing up for volunteer work, leave it in the first half. The key reason is that they joined the team to gain profit such as payment and employee benefits.
However, after joining, they realized that volunteers are totally different from being the employees of the company. They may get appreciation, learn new skills, or develop field connections, but it lacks an employment opportunity. Other reasons for volunteers to leave is that they find the work hectic, out of their scope, stressful and tiresome.
Withdrawal of the volunteer can affect the person's credibility as well as have a negative impact on the organization project. This situation can be handled wonderfully by the volunteer agreement. Volunteer agreements are clear means for the organization and the volunteer to understand and agree on the expectations from each other.
It is important to understand the working environment as well as the required work by the volunteer before entering into the program. Volunteer contract agreement details out all the rights and duties of the requirement of both parties. Before signing, the volunteer will understand the terms and conditions. This will ensure a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship between them.
Types of Volunteer Agreement
Various ways allow organizations to state their volunteer requirement for the different work. Mostly, the type of volunteer agreement depends on what the companies want from the volunteers when they sign up. A few of such forms are discussed as follows:
- Non-Profit Volunteer Agreement Form
Volunteer organizations use this type of agreement to ensure that potential volunteers understand that they will be exempted for monetary or other benefits by the organization. Since these projects are mostly for the welfare of the community, they avoid giving too much money to the volunteers. However, they may or may not provide volunteers a fixed amount to spend for the progress of the project.
- Volunteer Confidentiality Agreement Form
They are the types of forms used by volunteer organizations to safeguard their confidential information. It ensures that knowledge and data shared with volunteers during the camp and service are not allowed to be shared with someone outside of the working group.
- Student Volunteer Agreement Form
These forms are strictly used by the school authorities to sign up volunteers for school improvement or any other program. It ensures that students recognize that by participating in a school volunteer activity, they must commit to complete those activities in the provided resources.
How Does Volunteer Agreement Work?
A volunteer agreement explains the essence as well as the tasks that will be assigned to the volunteer. It serves as a guideline for the concerned parties and provides a written basis for the work. CocoDoc provides numerous templates to assist in the recruiting of volunteers based on the work requirement. The selected template would facilitate in filling out all the necessary information.
The volunteer contract follows a guided path of the different sections to smooth the transition of the work. These sections are as follows:
- Contract Duration: The start and end date of the volunteer project will be mentioned in this section.
- The Vision of the Organization: The clear statement regarding the mission and vision of the voluntary organization. It will help provide a clear-cut understanding to the volunteers about the work and its expected result.
- Roles and Obligations: This section can contain information regarding the roles and responsibilities of both volunteers and the organization.
- For Volunteers: General commitment regarding dedication, hard work, confidentiality, attendance in the service camps, and the best utilization of their skills will be mentioned here.
- For Organization: Assurance of supervision, training, health insurance, equal growth opportunity, and other commitments will be included.
- Schedule of Activity: If the program contains any specific schedule, the agreement will list it down for better understanding.
- Signature of Commitment: By signing the paper, the volunteer certifies the comprehension of the whole agreement and willfully commits to the organization.
Conclusion
Volunteering is a selfless gesture that brings people from diverse backgrounds to collaborate, learn and help to achieve the goals of their organization. This productive practice can commence by fulfilling the volunteer agreement template.
The article has highlighted all the important aspects of the volunteer agreement. If followed precisely, it guarantees that the volunteer and the organization will work side by side for any project by a thorough understanding of their roles.
