On this page
- Introduction
- The decision to involve spontaneous volunteers in your organisation
- Planning to manage spontaneous volunteers
- Spontaneous volunteer checklist
Introduction
During disasters, organisations are often overwhelmed by offers of help from the community and receive an influx of spontaneous volunteers.
A spontaneous volunteer is someone who offers help in this informal way in response to a disaster event and is not formally recognised as a volunteer of the organisation. Spontaneous volunteers are different from an organisation’s regular volunteers who engage with the organisations in a formal or structured way (for example, regular volunteers have usually been inducted and trained).
It’s common for people to say, ‘I’m not a volunteer, I’m just helping out’, or ‘I’m just doing my bit for the community’ – but a person is a volunteer if:
- they give their time (not money)
- for the common good (directly or indirectly benefit people outside the family or household or else benefit a cause), and
- they don’t receive a payment for the work performed (this is different from reimbursement)
People especially want to help meet the needs of the community in times of disaster. Some will volunteer help on their own (for example, by approaching friends, neighbours or even strangers), while others will approach not-for-profit organisations.
Managing volunteers is quite different during a disaster. This is because:
- need in a disaster is often more urgent
- volunteering in a disaster may involve traumatic events that have the potential to impact the mental health of people involved
- infrastructure may be damaged, making it difficult to travel or communicate
- volunteer environments in a disaster are often unfamiliar and may have higher levels of risk (for example, cleaning up after a flood)
- there can be an increase of volunteers and often include people who have never volunteered before
While spontaneous volunteers can provide crucial support to organisations, they also pose unique challenges, particularly in ensuring that organisations meet their legal obligations to volunteers under these urgent and often chaotic circumstances. For example, an organisation may not be able to follow its induction or training programs due to emergency circumstances.
One of the important decisions for a not-for-profit organisation is whether and how to involve spontaneous volunteer in your organisation’s work.
Case study – is Pat a member of the public or a volunteer?
Food Find Inc. is an organisation which sources, prepares and delivers food to people in need. A recent flood in the area has increased demands on their services especially for food delivery. Pat, who lives near Food Find, has seen the effects of the flood on her town on the news so she visits the organisation to see if she can help.
Food Find has regular volunteers who have been inducted and trained, but they are very busy and some have been affected by the flood. There are no volunteers available to make an urgent delivery. Jim, the manager at Food Find is trying to find someone to help. So when Pat drops in, Jim accepts Pat’s offer to help. Jim explains that Pat is needed to deliver food in the organisation’s delivery van. He hands Pat the keys with a list of addresses and details of the deliveries.
Whether Pat remains a member of the public or is now a volunteer is relevant because this may affect the organisation’s duty of care to Pat, and whether she has volunteer protections against personal liability and whether she is covered by the organisation’s volunteer insurance.
The decision to involve spontaneous volunteers in your organisation
Organisations must balance the urgent need for help during disasters with ongoing legal obligations, particularly under:
- the law of negligence, where organisations have a duty to take reasonable care not to cause foreseeable harm to other people or their property, and
- workplace laws to provide a safe and healthy work environment
For more information, see:
- our guide to insurance and risk management for community organisations
- our fact sheet on negligence
- our guide to community organisations and WHS laws
- part 4 of our national volunteering guide: volunteer safety
During a disaster, an organisation’s activities may be affected. Sometimes an organisation may decide to step up their activities in response to the disaster. In each of these cases, it’s important that an organisation understands its obligations under the law of negligence and workplace laws so it can ensure staff, clients and the public are safe.
For disaster-related information on an organisation’s duty of care, see our webpages:
Effective risk management practices help organisations manage their obligations under workplace laws and the law of negligence. And risk assessment is a critical part of planning for disasters.
Note – planning for a disaster
To plan for disasters, your organisation should consider having a business continuity plan, an emergency action plan, a recovery plan, and a pandemic or infectious diseases plan. If your organisation wants to involve spontaneous volunteers in its work, your business continuity plan should include a plan to manage spontaneous volunteers.
Preparing these plans involves conducting risk assessments that are relevant to each plan.
Planning to manage spontaneous volunteers
While you can’t anticipate all disasters, consider disasters that your organisation is likely to face and how your organisation might respond to them.
Identify and assess the potential risks if your organisation were to engage spontaneous volunteers during disasters. Your organisation can also reflect on its experiences if it has engaged spontaneous volunteers in the past.
Engaging spontaneous volunteers may involve more particular risks – a spontaneous volunteer could be injured, or injure others, due to lack of training, poor induction, or ambiguity around their role and scope of work.
Consider if spontaneous volunteers can help or hinder your disaster response. What roles could they fill given the timing and training available?
The advantages of engaging spontaneous volunteers include:
- they often have local knowledge and diverse skills
- they are motivated and engaged in the affected community
- some may continue to volunteer after the event as formal volunteers
The disadvantages of engaging spontaneous volunteers include:
- if not managed well, they may exacerbate the impact of disaster
- they pose a higher risk for your organisation
Note
Even if your organisation decides not to engage spontaneous volunteers, community members may offer assistance during a disaster. Develop a clear communication plan to inform the community of your decision and provide alternative ways they can help, such as making donations or spreading awareness.
If your organisation decides to engage spontaneous volunteers, it should develop a specific policy for this.
A spontaneous volunteers policy should cover:
- the circumstances where using spontaneous volunteers would be appropriate
- the minimum induction required for spontaneous volunteers, and
- any special risk management protocols to be followed – for example, ensuring that spontaneous volunteers wear identifying information that distinguishes them from fully inducted regular volunteers, and requiring the spontaneous volunteer to sign a declaration about their fitness to volunteer, and a waiver of liability
Spontaneous volunteer checklist
Use the following checklist to develop a policy to minimise risks and ensure the safety and effectiveness of your spontaneous volunteers.
If you anticipate that you may need to upscale your volunteer workforce during a disaster quickly, consider preparing a roster of volunteers who have already signed an agreement.
Note – insurance
Review your organisation’s insurance policies to ensure that coverage extends to its spontaneous volunteers.
See our national volunteering guide for an overview of the key legal obligations organisations owe volunteers. The guide covers key issues, including:
- the volunteer relationship – recruiting, inducting, managing performance and ending the volunteer relationship
- volunteer safety – your organisation's responsibility regarding negligence, work health and safety, managing risk, insurance and child safe standards
- unlawful workplace behaviour – protecting volunteers and other people your volunteers interact with from behaviour such as sexual harassment, discrimination, bullying and victimisation
Disclaimer: These resources provide general information about legal issues that may arise for not-for-profit organisations in managing disasters. This information is a guide only and is not legal advice. If you or your organisation has a specific legal issue, you should seek legal advice before deciding what to do. See full disclaimer and copyright notice.
The content on this webpage was last updated in December 2024.
