Stewardship Advocates once consulted with an Orthodox organization in organizational development. During the consultation it came to be noticed that pornography was randomly appearing on the full screen view of the female executive director’s computer. An inquiry revealed that the service technician utilized by the organization had the very questionable practice of taking office computers home to “work on them”. Stewardship Advocates conducted a background check and discovered that the technician was a convicted felon, who had served jail time for illegal possession of firearms and cocaine drug dealing. A different technician was quickly hired and immediately fixed the problem. However, a local Orthodox parish was also utilizing this technician who had unrestricted access to all the financial and personal files of the parish. When Stewardship Advocates informed the priest of the pornography, felony convictions, etc., the priest replied, “Well, we’ve never had any problem with him. It’s a Christian’s duty to forgive, isn’t it?” He remains their technician to this day several years later.

 Verified Volunteers appears to be highly qualified, often recommended, used by high-flying nonprofits and geared to the service industry. In the interest of full disclosure Stewardship Advocates has never used them and has no financial or contractual arrangement with them. Here is their story from their website.

Our Story

We believe it is possible to innovate in the most unexpected of places. For years, America’s volunteers have been shuttled through screening systems and platforms originally designed for employees. Inefficient processes that don’t change for decades are not only stale, they are typically ripe for reinvention.

We are a group of passionate volunteers with decades of professional experience working with nonprofits and service organizations in risk mitigation. Through our professional experience helping nonprofits, we hear about the difficulties of tracking, screening, onboarding and retaining good volunteers. Through our personal experience volunteering, we know all about the frustrating barriers that exist to lending a helping hand and joining causes quickly. We knew there was a better way for nonprofits and volunteers to work together, so we asked an industry-leading background screening company with 40 years of expertise to support our efforts and help us develop game-changing technology.

• Propel

Our solution helps nonprofits and service organizations better fulfill their missions by reducing the resources spent on protecting their organizations through volunteer screening, and growing their organizations. Our self-service features, sharing capabilities and easy dashboard management tools make a once-burdensome process easy.

• Empower

  Our streamlined volunteer screening process helps onboard volunteers faster than ever before. The hours and days spent filling out forms and awaiting results is gone. Our volunteers can get Verified, and seamlessly reuse, securely store and maintain their volunteer background checks with a few easy clicks.

• Connect

  We enable and encourage vetted volunteers and nonprofits to find each other, collaborate, and share their stories, causes and experiences. Join us as we build communities of Verified Volunteers across the country and reimagine what is possible in the service sector. We are based in Fort Collins, Colorado, and have offices in Atlanta, Cleveland and New York.