Volunteering for Charities – Short Form Agreement Template

This Short Form Charity Volunteer’s Agreement is suitable for use by a charity (or any other not-for-profit organization) engaging a volunteer to help with any of its activities including fundraising, administration, services to charity beneficiaries, or indeed any other day to day activities of the charity on its behalf, whether the volunteer volunteers with the charity occasionally or on a regular basis.

The essence of the volunteer arrangement is that the volunteer is volunteering as part of the charity’s organization rather than, for example, supporting the charity or its aims in some other way (e.g. alone or as part of a support group raising money “in aid of” the charity).

The charity may in particular wish to use this agreement (rather than the accompanying Long Form Charity Volunteer’s Agreement in this Sub-folder) if the charity is quite small and it has only a few volunteers who spend relatively little time volunteering each month/week, or if the charity strongly prefers to use an agreement which is as short as possible.

However, if the charity is fairly substantial or it has more than a few volunteers or if a volunteer spends a fair amount of time volunteering on a regular basis each week/month, and the charity is content to use a longer form of agreement, the accompanying Long Form Charity Volunteer’s Agreement in this Sub-folder will be more suitable.

Whatever the level of involvement of the volunteer, the charity needs to ensure to the extent possible that the volunteer does not become an employee of the charity. In this connection, it is important that it does not provide any payment or real benefit to the volunteer beyond reimbursing his expenses, and that it only engages the volunteer by means of a suitable written agreement. The agreement (which is a form of guidance and not a contract) should set out what the charity and the volunteer expect of each other and it should be written in such a way as will minimize the risk that it amounts to an employment contract. The agreement has been drafted with a view to meeting these requirements.

If a charity wishes to adapt this form in any way, it will need to take legal advice as to whether the intended changes would make it more likely that the volunteer will in law be an employee.

The document is compliant with the UK GDPR (UK General Data Protection Regulation)

We recommend that, before deciding either to engage any volunteers or which of the two forms of volunteer’s agreement in this Sub-folder to use, you read the Guidance Note on engaging Charity Volunteers which is also included in this Sub-folder.

The actual wording required for the Short Form Charity Volunteer’s Agreement is shown in plain type, and guidance for any additional wording required is in italics.

Optional phrases / clauses in each case are enclosed in square brackets. These should be read carefully and selected so as to be compatible with one another. Unused options in each section should be removed from that section.

Once you have purchased access to the appropriate document folder click on the “Download Document” button below. You will be asked what you want to do with the file. It is recommended that you save the document to a location of your choice prior to viewing.