Texas Realizes the Necessity of Running Reliable Background Checks on Volunteers

Nonprofits across Texas are realizing that although they are paying thousands of dollars for background checks, they are running searches which are far from foolproof. Aimed at keeping sex offenders and others with a criminal past from volunteering at their facilities, the checks often are incomplete in their results and do not catch hits in the records of volunteers.

The most comprehensive checks available are often too expensive many nonprofit officials said, and can often cost upwards of $60 per volunteer. Running these in-depth searches on volunteers would take money away from core services. Thankfully, the Department of Public Safety has just recently opened up their records to many nonprofits, which otherwise would not be available to the public. These records include arrests and warrants throughout the state. Although not as comprehensive as it could be, this search through the DPS drastically improves the probability of a nonprofit finding a volunteers' criminal past if there is one.

More states need to follow the example set by Texas and grant nonprofits access to certain government criminal database searches for free or at a minimal cost.