To help you comply with laws pertaining to the management of volunteers, this Community Service Brief provides guidance regarding some of the most common legal issues that arise in the management of volunteers. Discrimination, workers' compensation, child labor, and taxation receive attention here. The guidance available from this booklet is limited because the applicability of many of these laws to volunteers is unsettled and because the laws vary across the country. Each state has its own rules and even the interpretation of federal laws varies somewhat depending on court rulings and agency interpretations that have not been standardized nationally. Because the applicability of many laws to volunteers has not received much attention, this booklet sometimes provides only the principles of law rather than clear rules.
Few laws apply to volunteers per se .
However, statutes that do not specifically exclude volunteers or clearly limit their scope to paid workers may apply to all who provide service, whether or not in exchange for compensation. In addition to alerting you to your responsibilities under these laws, the information here may help you work to change laws that inappropriately interfere with your ability to accept the assistance of volunteers. More information about laws that limit the use of volunteers is available in Legal Barriers to Volunteer Service . For a free copy, write or fax the Nonprofit Risk Management Center. At the outset, a brief word about terminology is necessary.