Soapbox Engage Blog

As the fundraising year draws to a close, many nonprofits are preparing to make one last fundraising push. For some organizations, this might be hosting a big, year-end fundraising event, while others might try to make the most of their last initiative before it wraps up for the year. If your organization is taking either of these approaches and plans to recruit volunteers, you need to know if they should sign a waiver.

Waivers are a core part of many fundraising events’ registration process. When thinking about waivers, many nonprofit organizations first consider whether or not their guests should be signing one and may end up forgetting about their volunteers.

So the question is: do your volunteers need to sign a waiver? The answer is sometimes. At Smartwaiver, our team has worked with thousands of organizations, many of whom have unique needs for their waivers. In some cases, these organizations need all of their volunteers to sign a waiver, while others only need to do so for a few events a year.

To help your nonprofit gain a better understanding of volunteer waivers, this article will explore four key things all nonprofit organizations should know:

1. What a waiver means.
2. What should be included in your waiver.
3. What volunteers need to sign a waiver.
4. Special circumstances to consider.

Ultimately, waivers aren’t overly complicated documents, and gaining a solid understanding of them can be accomplished by asking the right questions. Let’s get started by exploring the fundamentals.

1. What a waiver means.

Before issuing waivers, you’ll want to be aware of what distributing waivers and getting them signed means for your organization and your volunteers. Fundamentally, waivers are about legal liability. They are legal documents and participants sign them to show they acknowledge risk and agree to not take legal action if any of the stated risks should occur.

However, waivers also fulfill the following important tasks:

• Ensure participants provide informed consent. Informed consent means that your volunteers have been adequately notified about all potential risks associated with participating in your fundraiser. This ensures they can make the right choice for their own personal safety and comfort.
• Maintain transparency. Waivers are ultimately an agreement between your organization and your volunteers. Asking them to sign waivers and keeping them on file allows you to maintain a history of their participation and acknowledgement of risk that can be pulled up at any time. In the event that a noted risk does occur, both parties will be aware of the agreement they made ahead of time, allowing both your organization and your volunteers to act accordingly.
• Facilitate your nonprofit’s relationship with other organizations. If your nonprofit is working with another organization, having proper, transparent documentation in order can help facilitate a smooth working relationship. For example, if you partner with a corporation to set up an employee engagement program with your nonprofit that includes volunteering, the organization will likely want official documentation detailing the risks that program might present.

Of course, to obtain these benefits, your waivers will need to be written in plain, understandable language and easily accessible. Ensure your volunteers have the time to read through each part of your waiver before signing, and consider providing multiple ways for participants to sign their waiver, such as online, with a paper form, or even a kiosk.

2. What should be included in your waiver.

The exact contents of your waiver will vary depending on your volunteer program. However, there are several common elements that need to be included and that your volunteers will likely be expecting. When working with a lawyer or insurance company to draft your waivers, ensure that you include the following fundamentals:

• Acknowledgement and assumption of risk. Your waiver should detail potential risks associated with volunteering in plain language. This means avoiding jargon and technical terms and instead providing a straightforward explanation of what volunteers can reasonably expect to encounter while participating in your program. This allows your volunteers to acknowledge and assume the risk without coercion.
• The volunteer's contact information. Your waiver should collect key information about your volunteers. This includes their name, contact information, and an emergency contact. This information is necessary if any of the noted risks do occur and will also help with your overall event management.
• The volunteer’s signature. At the end of your waiver, there should be a section where volunteers acknowledge they have read, understood, and agree to the contents of your waiver. They will then be prompted to sign the document. For traditional waivers, this can be done with paper and pen, and for online waivers, your volunteers can type their signature. As Re:Charity’s guide to online waiver software explains, digital signatures are valid as long as the waiver is uneditable in its digital form, accessible to the signer, and the signer gives their consent to sign electronically.

If your volunteers have questions about the contents of your waiver, ensure they have the appropriate resources they can turn to for answers. This may be a member of your staff or additional elaboration on your website. However, by keeping your waiver’s language simple and easy to understand, you avoid this scenario from regularly occurring.

3. When volunteers need to sign a waiver.

Some volunteer events have more associated risks than others. For the most part, it’s better to be safe than sorry, but most nonprofits can be relatively confident that their volunteers will encounter little to no risk by participating in events such as helping run an online fundraiser.

When choosing your volunteer activities, fundraisers, and events, assess the amount of potential risk. While this can sometimes come down to a judgment call from your nonprofit’s leadership, there are a few times when volunteers should sign waivers:

• Risk of physical injury. Volunteer activities that involve extraneous physical activity, heavy machinery, and animals should almost always have waivers. For example, volunteers working at an animal shelter should sign a waiver notifying them about the potential for animal bites and other related injuries.
• Partnership with another organization. As mentioned, your nonprofit should have all potential risks for volunteers readily documented and available when working with another organization’s staff. For example, if your nonprofit is partnered with a local business to support your upcoming fundraising race, you’ll want to provide waivers outlining risks for both volunteers and participants so the business’s employees can make an informed decision about how they’ll participate, even if volunteers will have significantly less associated risks.
• Risk of COVID-19. The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced a new variable into what counts as risk-taking behavior. Activities that include bringing people together in close quarters should be reassessed to minimize potential risk of transmission, and volunteers should be notified so they can make the right decision for their and their family’s health.

Be sure that your volunteers sign your waivers before they begin participating in any activities outlined in your waiver. Your nonprofit should host an onboarding session as part of your volunteer program, and this can be an opportune time to distribute waivers and ensure any questions about them are answered.

4. Special circumstances to consider.

Waivers are usually straightforward documents. However, there are a few situations that have unique stipulations your nonprofit will have to consider to ensure that you’re obtaining proper informed consent.

One of the most common extra details you’ll need to take into account is minors. In most cases, volunteers under eighteen can not sign a waiver without additional confirmation from a parent or legal guardian. If any of your campaigns involve minors volunteering, whether they’re low-risk such as a peer-to-peer campaign or more waiver-worthy like a 5K, ensure you have their guardian’s contact information and signature.

Additionally, ensure that you always receive written confirmation for your waivers. While a verbal agreement can be a good start in acknowledging your volunteers understand potential risks, it is not enough to secure your agreement. If volunteers have trouble accessing your waivers due to accessibility issues, work with them to find a solution that results in either a traditional or digital signature.

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Waivers are a necessary part of many volunteer programs. They provide a transparent agreement between your nonprofit and volunteers, while also protecting your organization from potential liability. Use the tips in this guide to create effective waivers for your events, programs, and fundraisers, and consider using additional resources such as waiver software to streamline and manage the process even further.

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Guest Post by Daryl McCarl

Daryl McCarl is the Director of Business Development at Smartwaiver, the leading digital waiver service trusted by thousands of organizations around the world.