One adult, one child, alone and for years. Who checks, who decides what the check is, and where you can read it.
organizations verified
40organizations verified
you can join today
33you can join today
publish screening you can read
15 of 33publish screening you can read
Published November 1, 2026 · Every organization checked against its own live site
What this guide counts, and what it doesn’t
It never says an organization does not screen its volunteers. It says where the screening is published — on the organization’s own site, only on an affiliate or chapter page, or nowhere we could find. Those are facts about websites. Several organizations here screen far more thoroughly than they say. Organizations whose mentors are paid staff are named and kept out of the count entirely, because employment vetting is a different regime.
Does mentoring work?
Modestly. And the people who study it have been saying so, in print, for twenty years.
The pooled effect size for youth mentoring has sat between 0.18 and 0.21 across four independent meta-analyses spanning 2002 to 2019. It has not moved. For scale, an effect size of 0.2 is the kind of difference you would struggle to notice in any individual child and can measure reliably only across thousands.
The study everyone cites is the 1995 Big Brothers Big Sisters random-assignment trial, and it is worth knowing what it actually was. It enrolled 1,138 young people at eight of more than 500 BBBS agencies in 1992 and 1993. Of the 487 assigned to treatment, 378 were actually matched. Those pairs met for about twelve months, roughly three times a month — around 144 hours of contact in total.
Its famous percentages — less likely to start drinking, fewer skipped school days — were converted into standardised effect sizes by the same research team twelve years later. They average 0.06 across all outcomes.
None of this is a reason to dismiss mentoring. It is a reason to be precise about it. A hundred and forty hours of one adult’s attention moves a child’s life a little, reliably, at scale. That is a real good, and it is worth a great deal to the individual child whether or not it shows up in a forest plot.
But it changes what the rest of this guide is about. A relationship worth 0.2 is a relationship worth protecting — and the literature is clear that a match which ends badly can leave a young person worse off than no match at all. The screening and supervision question is not paperwork around a nice-to-have. It is what decides whether a modest good turns into a harm.
The standard, and what it actually says
Unlike childhood obesity, this field has a written national benchmark: MENTOR’s Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring, now in its fifth edition, published in 2025. If you have read about it anywhere else, check which edition — the fifth abolished the “Benchmark versus Enhancement” structure that the fourth edition used and that most secondary writing still describes.
Screening is Element 6, and its Standard of Practice reads:
Programs should implement a mentor screening and enrollment process that determines all mentors are both safe and suitable for the program experience prior to being formally accepted and placed in a mentoring role.
Notice what that sentence does. It sets an outcome — safe and suitable — rather than naming a check. The six supporting practices do require written policies, a formal application, a face-to-face interview, a criminal history records check, reference checks with at least two references, and a formal commitment from the mentor. But on the content of the check itself, the standard is markedly less prescriptive than people assume.
Three things the current standard does not require
A fingerprint check. An FBI fingerprint-based check is what the document calls ideally, noting that availability “varies greatly from state to state”. Checking every state a mentor has lived in for ten years is something programmes “should consider”. Neither is stated as mandatory.
A sex offender registry check. The fourth edition named sex offender registries, child abuse registries and driving records explicitly. In the fifth edition’s required practice those are compressed to “checks of other records that may be relevant”. The registries survive only in the narrative discussion. Anyone writing from the older document and citing the current one will get this wrong.
A re-screening interval. There isn’t one. The three-year figure that circulates is an example, inside an optional practice, in a section headed “Additional Practices for Consideration”. Any claim that the standard requires re-screening every three years is false.
What the standard does say, and says well, is this: “It is a privilege, not a right, to mentor a young person in a program.” It strongly encourages rejecting anyone with histories involving crimes against children, recent or repeated violence, or sexual crimes. And it explicitly contemplates programmes that admit people with records — credible messenger programmes for justice-involved young people, where lived experience of the system is the qualification.
Who actually makes the rule
If the standard is softer than expected, the law is softer still — and this is the part a background-check company has the least incentive to tell you.
The National Child Protection Act of 1993, as amended by the Volunteers for Children Act of 1998, is routinely described as requiring organizations serving children to run background checks. It does not. A state may have procedures letting designated entities request nationwide checks. The Attorney General runs a federal pathway where states don’t. And then there is subsection (d):
A qualified entity shall not be liable in an action for damages solely for failure to conduct a criminal background check.
That is the opposite of a mandate. Federal law creates an access route to records and expressly protects organizations that choose not to use it. Anyone telling you otherwise — including anyone selling you a background check — is wrong about the statute.
The binding requirements, where they exist, come from somewhere else entirely: a state statute, a court rule, a school district’s volunteer policy, or a government contract. Which is why the same volunteer role can carry wildly different obligations depending on who happens to be standing behind it.
The disclosure gap
We verified 40 organizations. 7 of them don’t use volunteer mentors at all, which leaves 33 whose mentors are volunteers.
Of those 33, 15 publish their screening requirements on their own site, where a parent or a prospective mentor can read them before committing. 9 publish nothing nationally but have real, often very detailed requirements one layer down — at an affiliate, a chapter, a sponsoring church, a host university. And for 9 we could not find the requirements published anywhere.
That middle number is the interesting one, because it is not negligence. The affiliate pages are frequently better than anything national. Big Brothers Big Sisters Kansas City publishes the most complete screening description in this entire guide — identity confirmation, criminal history check, driving record, insurance verification, personal and family references, an extensive interview, an in-home assessment. Its national body publishes none of that, and its 2023 Standards of Practice sit behind a login.
Look at where that Kansas City description lives, though. It is on the page written for parents asking how Bigs are vetted — not on the page recruiting volunteers. A prospective mentor reading the volunteer page alone would not know what they were about to go through.
And some national pages say the opposite of a screening message. Big Brothers Big Sisters’ own “Become a Big” page reassures you that “You don’t need special training” and “You don’t need any special degrees or job skills.” The thinnest we found belongs to the “I Have A Dream” Foundation, whose mentor recruitment page asks about temperament — you have been told you are a great listener, you are curious about people — and then presents a sign-up form. No screening, no references, no interview, no commitment, no supervision.
What a background check misses
The best-written screening standard we found in either of these guides belongs to Kids Hope USA, a church-based programme that puts one volunteer with one child in a public elementary school for an hour a week. Its five steps are application, interview, reference checks, criminal history check, and pastoral review — applied, in their words, to “everyone in your program who will have access to children—including your pastor, spouse, and best friend. In other words, there are no exceptions.”
And then they write the sentence that ought to be on the wall of every organization in this guide:
We cannot rely on background checks to identify predators – only 10% have a criminal history. This is why the Application, Interview, Reference Checks, and Pastoral Approval are all critical components.
Elsewhere they are blunter still: a background check is “a risk management tool and part of due diligence, but [checks] are far from being a guarantee of safety.”
We sell background checks. We think that sentence is correct, and that any organization treating a clear criminal record as the end of its safeguarding obligation has misunderstood what it bought. A records check finds people who have been caught. The interview, the references, the supervision, the match monitoring and the rule that no adult is ever alone with a child unobserved are what address everybody else.
Kids Hope also does something almost nobody else does: it warns programme directors about specific plea-bargained offences — providing alcohol or pornography to a minor, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, indecency or exhibitionism, voyeurism — and instructs them not to accept a self-reported explanation for any of them.
The organization with the strictest rules publishes the least
Court Appointed Special Advocates are the most heavily screened volunteers in this guide. A CASA volunteer is appointed by a judge, sworn in, given access to a child in state custody and to the case file, and completes more than thirty hours of training before meeting the child.
The national association’s 2025 standards enumerate it: a written application, three or more unrelated references, an in-person interview, and a background check initially and at least every four years covering local court records where the applicant lives and works, state criminal records, the FBI or another national database, the national sex offender registry, a child abuse registry where law permits, and a Social Security number check — extended to every jurisdiction the applicant has lived in for seven years. All of it complete before assignment to a case. The same standard applies to staff, volunteers and board members alike.
In California the requirement is harder still, because it is statutory: Penal Code § 11105.04 obliges a CASA programme to submit fingerprints to the Department of Justice for state and federal criminal history checks and for child abuse investigation records.
Now read CASA of Los Angeles’s volunteer page. It describes an application and an interview. It does not mention a background check at all.
That is the inversion at the centre of this guide. The organizations with the most rigorous, legally mandated screening in the entire sector publish the least about it — precisely because the requirement is not theirs. It belongs to a statute and a court, so it never makes it onto the page a volunteer reads.
The same pattern, in a school corridor
When mentoring happens on a campus, the school district decides who may be alone with a child on its property. Most organizations never mention this. Two describe it exactly.
Everybody Wins DC does not run checks at all. Mentors must obtain and maintain a clearance from the jurisdiction they read in, and email a copy before being matched. The organization then publishes what each jurisdiction demands: DC requires fingerprinting and mandated reporter training, valid two years; Montgomery County a training video, three years; Arlington an application and a video, three years.
Kids Hope USA tells its church directors to find out the district’s policy, find out the church’s policy, note the two may differ, and then “make sure to meet or exceed whatever policy is in place for the school, and recognize that the associated costs may need to be covered by the church.”
The cost of that arrangement is real. Clearance backlogs in the DC schools have been reported as delaying volunteers for months — adults who have already said yes, waiting on a system that belongs to nobody they can call.
The organizations
What follows is every organization we could verify, grouped by where the mentoring happens. 33 of them publish a way to apply, and those carry a link straight to it. Where an organization’s own site contradicts itself, or a figure turned out to be undated or third-hand, we have left it out and said why.
The national organizations
These are the names you have heard of. Read the screening column carefully: almost all of these organizations do screen their mentors, and most of them do not say so anywhere a parent or a prospective volunteer can read it. The detail, where it exists, is usually one or two layers down.
Matches adult volunteer mentors ("Bigs") one-to-one with young people ("Littles") through a network of independently incorporated local agencies.
Community-Based Mentoring
School-Based Mentoring
Operation Bigs
National Youth Council
Volunteers: Volunteer Bigs are the entire delivery mechanism. The national site routes an applicant to a local agency, which does all screening, matching and supervision.
Hundreds of separately incorporated local affiliates each hold their own EIN; the number here is the national entity only. The homepage figure of 500,000 young people is a 2035 goal, not an achievement, so it is not quoted.
Nothing about checks, references or interviews appears on the national site. Its "Become a Big" page says the opposite of a screening message — "You don’t need special training", "You don’t need any special degrees or job skills". The detailed requirements live in the 2023 Standards of Practice, which sit behind an Okta login and cannot be read by the public. What the national site does publish is post-match supervision: trained match support specialists, regular communication, and a child safety helpline.
One-to-one mentoring matches between adult volunteers and Kansas City-area young people.
Be a Big
Get a Big
Big Couples
Reach
Around 1,000 active matches(bbbskc.org)
Volunteers: Volunteer Bigs, recruited online, screened and trained by agency staff, matched by a match support specialist.
Worth noticing where this sits: the full screening disclosure is on the page written for PARENTS asking how Bigs are vetted, not on the page recruiting volunteers. A prospective mentor reading the volunteer page alone would not know what they were about to go through.
The most complete screening description found anywhere in this guide, in their own words: "application, confirmation of identity via social security number and drivers license, criminal history background check, driving record check, auto insurance verification, personal/family references, an extensive online interview, an in-home assessment, and ongoing volunteer training and support." Bigs must be 21 or older.
One-to-one community- and site-based mentoring across eastern Nebraska and the Iowa side of the Omaha metro.
Community-Based Mentoring
Team Big
Reach
520 active matches in Omaha and Council Bluffs; 168 participants in Lincoln(bbbsmidlands.org)
Volunteers: Applicants attend an information session, apply online, train, interview, then meet the match and family with a Match Support Specialist present.
Their own counters also show 92 and 26 young people waiting for a Big.
Published qualifications: at least 19 years old, a high school graduate or GED, a valid driver’s licence and car insurance, and "complete a background and reference check". The page does not name the databases searched, the scope, or any re-check interval.
Multi-state·New York, NY·Founded 1999·EIN 30-0105507
Matches every student in its partner high schools with a college-educated volunteer mentor who supports them through high school and into college.
Direct Service (NYC, Chicago, Baltimore)
Partner Programs
College Success Program
Reach
35,948 students matched since 1999; partnerships with 17 organizations across 19 cities(imentor.org)
Volunteers: Recruited directly through a 60-minute online info session. Every pair is assigned a full-time staff College Success Program Manager, and pairs communicate on iMentor’s own platform rather than privately.
Even here the detail sits on the FAQ. The main "Become a Mentor" page mentions no screening at all.
The only national organization in this guide that publishes fingerprinting. In their words, mentors "undergo an extensive screening process", comprising "an online application, attending a group orientation session, a 30-minute telephone interview, fingerprinting and background check and personal/professional reference checks". Mentors must be 21 or older. For its licensed Partner Programs it is explicit that it devolves the duty: "Each organization is responsible for recruiting, screening, and training their volunteers."
The only national organization here that publishes a re-check interval: "Mandatory annual criminal background checks for staff and volunteers." That is the whole of it — no check type, no databases, no mention of the sex offender registry or fingerprinting. Local Clubs must also report suspected abuse, complete an annual safety assessment, maintain a board-led safety committee and display a child safety helpline.
The field-building and advocacy body for the mentoring sector. It sets the standards and runs the national programme directory; it does not make matches itself.
Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring
Mentoring Connector
National Mentoring Summit
Reach
A national network of affiliates; their homepage says 25 and their affiliates page lists 22(mentoring.org)
Author of the Elements of Effective Practice, the field’s benchmark document, now in its 5th edition (2025).
MENTOR has no mentors of its own to screen. What it publishes is advice: that a programme’s process "can include a written application", references, "a background check" and "a personal interview", and that you should ask any programme about its screening, training and matching. Note the permissive framing — "can include", not "must".
Multi-state·New York, NY·Founded 1991·EIN 13-3688434
Pairs academically driven high school students from low-income families with volunteer mentors over a three-year Saturday programme aimed at college admission.
The three-year core programme
14 regional chapters
College and SAT preparation
Reach
1,100 students across 14 chapters(mindsmatter.org 2024-25 annual report)
Volunteers
Nearly 2,000 volunteers nationwide
Volunteers: Volunteer mentors who are college graduates. Recruitment and screening are run by the chapters, not nationally.
The mentoring happens in a supervised group setting on a Saturday, not in unsupervised one-to-one time. That materially changes the risk profile and is worth weighing against the thinner national disclosure.
Nothing at national level. The New York City chapter publishes the detail: a four-year degree, passing a criminal background check, child protection training, signing youth protection policies and a 30-minute interview. Other chapters vary — Philadelphia adds a state child abuse clearance, and minimum ages run from 21 to 22.
Nothing published on screening, checks, training content or placement process, on any page we could find. Training is asserted repeatedly and never described. For an organization placing mentors into schools at this claimed scale, that absence is one of the sharper findings in this guide.
Runs a structured online mentoring programme in which working professionals mentor high school students for an hour a week on a monitored platform during a scheduled class period.
E-mentoring programme
Network-mapping curriculum
Volunteers: Volunteer e-mentors, largely recruited through corporate partners, trained and supported throughout.
Mentor sign-up is currently a waitlist rather than open registration.
Screening is confirmed only indirectly, by what it rules out: "we only have mechanisms in place to do background checks of U.S. based adults who have Social Security numbers" and "We cannot accept international volunteers at this time." No scope, database, cost or re-check interval. Their strongest published safeguard is structural rather than discretionary — sessions are monitored once a week during the class period, and automated features plus a programme manager screen conversations and filter personal information.
The thinnest mentor recruitment page in this guide. It asks about temperament and nothing else: you have been told you are a great listener, you are interested in people, you love to encourage others, you are a lifelong learner. Then a sign-up form. No screening, no checks, no references, no interview, no training, no commitment, no supervision.
No checks, references or selection process published. Worth saying in their defence: their Fellows are college students rather than minors, and contact happens at monthly group workshops, so the child-safety exposure is materially lower than a one-to-one youth match.
Nothing at national level. What is published instead is curriculum: a five-module mentee curriculum, pre- and post-tests, goal-setting exercises, mentor guides, and certificates issued after training. Chapter-level evidence of checks exists — the Augusta chapter hosts a background check application — so practice almost certainly includes them.
Provides residential homes and academy scholarships plus long-term academic and career support from middle school through career launch.
Residential homes
Academy locations
My Road
EnvisionU
Reach
14 affiliates, 12 of them in the US across 11 states(hopeignites.org/about)
Volunteers: Volunteer mentoring is not the delivery model; scholars are supported by residential and programme staff. The national volunteering on offer is virtual and career-focused.
Rebranded from Boys Hope Girls Hope in 2025, and the organization says the legal name change is still in progress. Its own site gives two different figures for people served, so neither is quoted.
Nothing published. The volunteering offered nationally is virtual résumé reviews and mock interviews rather than contact with children, which may be why — but a reader would find nothing either way.
Pairs children facing the greatest obstacles with one salaried professional mentor who stays with them for 12 or more years.
The Friend model
Alumni and post-secondary support
Sovereign Tribal Nation partnerships
Reach
48 locations in 23 states(friendsofthechildren.org/about)
Excluded from this guide’s volunteer screening count, because its mentors are employees. Counting it would make the field look better than it is.
No screening policy published
Not a volunteer question: "Each child is paired with a paid professional mentor called a Friend." But nothing is published on employment screening either, which is a real gap for a model built on one adult alone with one child for twelve years.
Coaches are stipended AmeriCorps members, not volunteers, and AmeriCorps members must clear a National Service Criminal History Check by federal rule. College Possible’s own site publishes none of that — only three weeks of training and the length of the term.
In the school building
When mentoring happens on a campus, two sets of rules meet. The organization recruits and trains the volunteer; the school district decides who may be alone with a child on its property. Most organizations never mention the second one. The handful that do are the most useful reading in this guide.
Pairs a screened church volunteer one-to-one with a child at a partner public elementary school for one hour a week during the school day.
Mentor Program
Prayer Partners
Church and partner-school matching
Volunteers: A church signs an affiliate agreement, Kids Hope matches it with a partner school, and the church appoints a programme director who recruits, screens, trains and supervises the mentors.
Their guidance on the district tension is the clearest we found anywhere: consult the principal on the district’s policy, discuss with the pastor what the church requires, note the two may differ, and then "make sure to meet or exceed whatever policy is in place for the school". The religious requirement is on the mentor’s side only; the hour happens in a public school and children are referred by the school.
The most rigorous and most candid published standard in either of our guides. A mandatory five-step process — application, interview, reference checks, criminal history check, pastoral review — with no exceptions: "the Kids Hope USA Screening Standards must be followed for everyone in your program who will have access to children—including your pastor, spouse, and best friend." Checks cover the National Sex Offender Registry plus a state-level criminal history check, refreshed every two to three years. Automatic disqualifiers are listed by name, and directors are warned about specific plea-down offences rather than being left to guess.
Volunteer tutors give one-to-one reading help to elementary students in Title I schools, using a structured curriculum in a dedicated reading centre.
One-to-one reading tutoring
Online tutoring
AmeriCorps site coordination
Reach
90,420 students tutored across 640 Title I partner schools in 2025-26(Reading Partners 2026 National Impact Report)
Volunteers
5,244 community tutors in 2025-26
Volunteers: Community tutors matched with one student for the same 45-minute slot each week. An AmeriCorps member greets tutors on site and hands over the student’s materials.
Earlier years were counted on a different basis, so the figures are not comparable year to year and no growth rate is quoted.
The best-documented secular programme here, and it ties the check explicitly to the format: "Because volunteers work one-on-one with children, Reading Partners is required to conduct a thorough criminal background check before a volunteers’ service can begin." The standard is set regionally with the school and district partners, because requirements differ by state and city. It will not accept another organization’s result, and it reimburses the fee.
Volunteer reading mentors meet the same elementary student one-to-one each week at school.
Power Readers
StoryTime
The Book Project
Volunteers: Matched to a single student for the year, and pairs can continue until the child finishes elementary school. Staff are on site at every session.
That arrangement has a cost. Clearance backlogs in the DC schools have been reported as delaying volunteers for months.
The clearest illustration in this guide of the district setting the bar: Everybody Wins DC does not run the check at all. "Power Readers mentors must complete and maintain a background clearance from the jurisdiction in which they plan to read", and must email a copy before being matched. They then publish what each jurisdiction demands — DC requires fingerprinting and mandated reporter training with a two-year validity, Montgomery County a training video and three years, Arlington an application and three years.
Places a full-time site coordinator inside a public school to connect students and families with academic and basic-needs support.
Integrated Student Supports
Site coordination
Affiliate network
Reach
3,720 schools and sites reaching 1.9 million students in 2024-25(communitiesinschools.org/our-model)
Volunteers: The national site mentions volunteers exactly once, to say find your local organization. Mentor and tutor recruitment is entirely affiliate-level.
Their About page gives different figures from their model page, so only the dated ones are quoted.
The national site does not contain the phrase "background check". The affiliates do, at length: the Federal Way mentor application runs to thirteen pages, embeds the school district’s own state-patrol request form, asks for four references and explicitly excludes relatives, and requires standing consent to a re-check every two years — declining it makes you ineligible. Affiliate practice varies widely.
Published plainly: "Submit official application, participate in a candidate interview, and pass a background check and basic literacy screening", plus 25 hours of training a year. AARP’s own pages say nothing about district requirements or fingerprinting — but local programmes add both, with Phoenix requiring a fingerprint clearance card and a Maryland programme describing state and federal checks plus fingerprinting.
The inverse of Reading Partners: the district runs the check and Oasis often pays for it. In Albuquerque, "Perspective volunteers also undergo a FBI background check, paid for by Oasis". In San Antonio volunteers complete the district’s own screening. In two Missouri districts tutors go through district HR background checks and fingerprinting before being cleared for one-to-one work.
Volunteer tutors give one-to-one academic help to children experiencing homelessness, at shelters and community sites rather than in schools.
One-to-one tutoring
Skid Row Learning Center
School supply distribution
Volunteers: Matched by a regional coordinator to a specific student.
Because the tutoring happens at shelters rather than on campus, no district requirements apply. It is the clean counter-example to everything else in this section.
Live Scan fingerprint background check, two personal or professional references, age 18 or over, and a live online introductory training session, with advanced training after three months. The check is "at their own expense" — the only organization here that publicly puts the cost on the volunteer rather than covering it.
Young adults serve a full-time year in under-resourced public schools as near-peer student success coaches.
AmeriCorps service year
Whole School Whole Child model
Reach
29 cities across 21 states, in 250 schools(cityyear.org)
Members are stipended AmeriCorps members aged 17 to 25 with a living allowance, health insurance and an education award — not volunteers, and excluded from this guide’s volunteer count. Their own national site does not mention the checks; the detail is on the applicant pages.
The most rigorous screening in this guide, because federal law compels it: a National Sex Offender Public Website search, an FBI fingerprint-based search, and state criminal searches in both the member’s home state and the state of service. Anyone on the national registry or with a murder conviction is ineligible; other records are reviewed case by case.
Adult volunteer leaders build long-term relationships with middle and high school students, including contact work on school campuses.
Club
Campaigners
WyldLife
Young Lives
Reach
Over two million young people a year(younglife.org/about/ministry-statistics)
Volunteers: Volunteer leaders are recruited locally and go through the same screening as paid staff.
Relationship-based youth ministry rather than a structured one-to-one match. The religious requirement is on the leader’s side; we found no published requirement that students profess faith, but no explicit statement that the programme is open to all either.
"All Young Life staff and volunteer leaders go through a careful screening process" of application, interviews and character references, and "Criminal background checks are completed on all staff and volunteers." Leaders are trained in the signs of child abuse, teen suicide and self-harm. The full policy text, the vendor and the renewal interval are not published.
Chapter-based Christian youth ministry reaching 11 to 19 year olds through school-campus clubs and community programmes, some involving one-to-one mentoring.
Campus Life
City Life
Juvenile Justice Ministry
Parent Life
Reach
1,400 ministry sites across 130 chapters(Organization-supplied profile)
Volunteers: Volunteer leaders are recruited and screened at chapter level.
We could not find those Safety Standards on their own site — the copy we read was hosted by a third party. Nothing is published about district requirements, despite Campus Life operating on school campuses.
Their Safety Standards set a five-stage sequence of application, interview, reference checks, criminal background check and final evaluation, required for "any volunteer who will be working directly with youth". Chapters may use their own vendor provided it meets a floor including Social Security verification and a national criminal check.
A documentation gap worth naming. The national site says the organization "upholds rigorous safety standards" and links a Child Protection Plan, but publishes none of the requirements — no check type, scope, vendor, renewal interval or training hours. What is visible comes from chapter forms and varies: one requires a level 3 background check and reviews motor vehicle records, another schedules an interview only once the check has cleared, another requires twelve hours of training before camp.
Christ-centred after-school programmes, summer camps and one-to-one mentoring for third to eighth graders at partner schools in East and Central Texas.
Mentor Connect
After School
Summer Camps
Reach
2,148 children served across 25 schools(thementoringalliance.com)
Volunteers: Mentor Connect volunteers are matched with a child at a specific school.
The districts almost certainly impose their own clearance for campus access. The organization does not say so, and a prospective mentor reading its site would not know to ask. Recorded as not published, not as not screened.
Their Become a Mentor page lists an application, an interview, a training session, a minimum age of 18, a faith requirement and a two-year commitment — and says nothing about a background check, references or screening of any kind. The mentoring itself happens at the child’s school, partly during the lunch period.
Where the stakes are highest
Children in foster care, children with a parent in prison, young people under court supervision, children who are grieving. These are the relationships where getting the adult wrong does the most harm — and the section where the screening question stops being about nonprofit policy at all. Here the rules often come from a statute, a court order or a government contract, and the organization is simply carrying them out.
The membership association for the local programmes whose trained community volunteers are appointed by judges to advocate for children in abuse and neglect proceedings.
Standards for Local CASA/GAL Programs
National pre-service training curriculum
Federal legislative advocacy
Reach
890 state and local programmes serving approximately 214,000 young people in 2024(nationalcasagal.org/our-impact/our-reach)
Volunteers
Over 79,000 volunteers nationwide in 2024
Volunteers: Not recruited nationally. Local programmes recruit, screen, train and supervise; a volunteer is then appointed by a judge to one child’s case and sworn in.
Their standards open by conceding they are not the top of the hierarchy: "Applicable statutes, law, Tribal law, court rules and regulations take precedence." An earlier guidance document is blunter still, warning that "No single screening method is adequate". Volunteers complete more than 30 hours of training before working with a child.
The most enumerated standard in either guide. Their 2025 Standards require a written application, three or more unrelated references, an in-person interview, and a background check initially and at least every four years covering: local court records where the applicant lives and works, state criminal records, the FBI or another national database, the national sex offender registry, a child abuse registry check where law permits, and a Social Security number check — extended to every jurisdiction the applicant has lived in for seven years. All of it must be complete before the volunteer is assigned to a case, and the same standard applies to staff, volunteers and board members alike. Anyone with a conviction or pending charge for a sex offence or child abuse is declined.
Trains and supports community volunteers appointed by Los Angeles County judges to advocate for individual children in the foster care system.
Court-appointed volunteer advocacy
35-hour pre-service training
Continuing education
Volunteers: Recruited through information sessions, then application and interview. After training a volunteer is sworn in by a judge in Children’s Court.
This is the inversion at the centre of the guide: the organization with the most rigorous legally mandated screening in the sector publishes the least about it. Volunteers complete 35 hours of pre-service training including court observation.
Their volunteer page describes an application and an interview, and mentions no background check at all. The actual requirement is among the most stringent anywhere: California Penal Code § 11105.04 obliges a CASA programme to submit fingerprints to the Department of Justice for state and federal criminal history checks and for child abuse investigation records, and Welfare & Institutions Code § 102(e) requires the Judicial Council to set screening guidelines including interviews, reference checks, sex offence and criminal records, and DMV information.
The statewide organization that funds, sets standards for and supports local Texas CASA programmes whose volunteers advocate for children in the state child protection system.
Texas CASA Standards
Local programme contracting
Collaborative Family Engagement
Volunteers: Recruited by local programmes; the volunteer reports to a judge to advocate for the child’s best interests.
A good illustration of layered authority: the volunteer’s role exists because Texas Family Code § 107.031 lets a court appoint a volunteer advocate as guardian ad litem, and a court-certified advocate may additionally act as a surrogate parent for special-education purposes under federal law.
Published plainly on their volunteer page: "Go through a criminal and CPS background check", alongside in-depth training and a minimum age of 21. No further detail is given.
Names the mechanism, which almost nobody does: "SLM conducts CORI/SORI background checks for all prospective mentors" — the Massachusetts criminal offender and sex offender registry systems. The sequence is information session, application, interview, check, training, match.
Surrounds Baltimore students facing the largest opportunity gaps with a volunteer "family" of several adults for ten years — through high school and six years beyond.
Thread Family model
Volunteer leadership development
Reach
Over 5,500 people in the Thread community, counting students, alumni, volunteers and collaborators(thread.org)
Volunteers: Recruited from college students to retirees and placed in a Thread Family around a student. Most serve as Family Members; some train further to coach other volunteers.
The design is itself a safeguard: several adults around one student for ten years means no single volunteer carries the relationship alone. Their site footer still reads 2019 and we found no 2025 or 2026 activity on it, so treat their published figures with care.
Application, signing the volunteer handbook, a Maryland background check through a named vendor, and orientation. The check is free of charge to the volunteer — a deliberate removal of a cost barrier that other organizations pass on.
Requirements are listed plainly — be at least 21, live in the New York City area, complete the background check process, complete training, commit to a year — but no detail is given on which checks are run.
Their FAQ asks "Does everyone in my home need a background check?", which establishes that checks are part of becoming a mentor and that the question reaches household members — but the answers are rendered by script and could not be read. Pennsylvania’s Child Protective Services Law imposes clearance requirements on adult volunteers with direct contact with children, which is the likely source.
Runs free summer camps and year-round programmes for children and teenagers grieving the death of someone close to them.
One-week Kids Camps
Local Meetups
GRIEF SUCKS
Grief Quest
Volunteers: The camps are volunteer-staffed with defined roles: Volunteer Counselor, who lives in the cabin with campers, plus Grief Specialists, nurses and photographers.
Residential camps in most states are separately subject to licensing rules that mandate staff checks; Experience Camps cites none, so none is attributed here.
An interview and a background check before attending camp, role-specific applications, online training, and a one-day orientation the day before camp begins. Some roles are gated on two years of prior camp experience. No age requirement or reference requirement is published.
Free peer grief support groups, resources and professional training for children, teenagers, young adults and their families.
Peer grief support groups
Grief Out Loud podcast
Professional seminars
Volunteers: Peer support groups are run by volunteer facilitators who create the space for grieving children and work alongside trained staff. Groups meet for 90 minutes every other week.
Their model has been adopted by grief programmes across the country, which makes what they publish a de facto reference point for others.
Neither the volunteer page nor the FAQ mentions a background check, references or an interview. The published pathway is an application and a training sequence — orientation, two full training days and an observation debrief, roughly eighteen hours — with no stated vetting step.
Supports young people with disabilities through mentoring, career readiness and leadership development, and trains other organizations to run inclusive mentoring.
1:1 Mentoring
Peer and Group Mentoring
Disability Mentoring Certification Program
Volunteers: Mentors are recruited through a Become a Mentor route and an online application, for one-to-one, peer and group matches.
The widest gap in the guide between stakes and disclosure. PYD matches adults one-to-one with young people with disabilities — a group at substantially elevated risk of abuse — and it certifies other organizations to run inclusive mentoring, which makes its published standard a sector reference. Recorded as not published, not as not screened.
Nothing published on the homepage, the mentoring page, the get-involved page or the volunteer application: no background check, no references, no interview, no training hours, no minimum commitment.
Intensive community-based alternatives to youth incarceration and to group placements, so young people can stay with their families.
Youth & Family Empowerment
YAPWRAP wraparound model
YAP Supported Work
Reach
More than 16,000 families a year across 100+ communities in 32 states and DC(yapinc.org)
Founded in 1975 after Pennsylvania removed 400 young people from Camp Hill State Prison. Excluded from this guide’s volunteer count, because the screening is a government-contract question rather than a nonprofit policy one.
No volunteer screening policy because there is no volunteer mentoring role. The one-to-one relationship is held by a paid Advocate hired from the young person’s own community — "Get paid to make a difference". Their site states no check or clearance requirement for that role either; the screening sits inside employment hiring and inside the public contracts they hold.
Works relentlessly and over years with young adults aged 16 to 24 at the highest risk of violence, using cognitive behavioural therapy and persistent outreach rather than waiting for readiness.
Four-part intervention model
Roca Impact Institute
Rewire CBT
Excluded from this guide’s volunteer count for the same reason as Youth Advocate Programs.
No screening policy published
Not a volunteer model. The relationship is held by paid Youth Workers who make repeated uninvited outreach, including door knocks to gunshot survivors within 48 to 72 hours. Screening sits in employment hiring and public-agency contracts.
Long-term support, outdoor leadership and peer community for children with a parent or loved one in prison, jail or immigration detention.
Outdoor Leadership Program
National Support Circles
Whole Family Support
Reach
Programmes reach young people in 32 states(projectavary.org)
Volunteers: Volunteering is event-based and staff-supervised — setup and cooking at family events, helping at summer camp. The sustained relationships are held by paid part-time counsellors.
Founded at San Quentin Prison by a chaplain. They actively encourage people who have themselves had a parent incarcerated to apply for paid roles.
No background check, screening or training requirement appears on their volunteer page or their recruitment page. The structure matters: the people in sustained relationships with young people are hired, so that screening falls under employment rather than a published volunteer policy.
Five questions worth asking
If 18 of 33 volunteer-led organizations here don’t publish their screening where a reader can find it, the practical response is not suspicion. It is to ask. These are the five questions that actually separate programmes, phrased the way the people who run them will recognise.
1
What does the check cover, and who pays for it?
A state criminal record search is not a national one, and neither is a sex offender registry check. Ask which jurisdictions, and whether it is fingerprint-based. Then ask who pays — School on Wheels asks the volunteer to cover it; Thread covers it; Oasis pays the district’s fee on the volunteer’s behalf. The answer tells you how the programme is resourced.
2
How often is it re-run?
There is no required interval, so the answer is entirely the programme’s own choice. National CASA sets four years. Boys & Girls Clubs re-check annually. Many never say. A programme that has thought about this will have a number; one that has not will tell you it checked once.
3
Who interviews me, and how long does it take?
The interview is where unsuitability actually surfaces, and it is the step most easily shortened under recruitment pressure. A programme that puts a named person and a real length to this is doing the part a records check cannot.
4
What is the supervision after the match begins?
Screening is the gate; supervision is the mechanism. Ask who contacts you, how often, in the first three months — and whether anybody ever contacts the young person separately. The literature is clear that a match which ends badly leaves a child worse off, and supervision is what catches a failing match early.
5
Am I ever alone with the child somewhere unobserved?
A school corridor, a public library and a family’s living room carry very different risk, and the programmes that have thought hardest about this say so without being asked. Kids Hope USA puts its matches in a school during school hours for exactly this reason.
And one for the organizations reading this, which a number of you will be: the single cheapest credibility improvement available to most programmes in this guide is to move what you already do onto the page a volunteer reads. Big Brothers Big Sisters Kansas City has written the best screening description in this entire guide. It is on the page for parents. Put it on the page for mentors too.
How we built this
We started from MENTOR’s affiliate network, the National Mentoring Resource Center’s programme listings, IRS Form 990 records, and the membership lists of the national bodies in each segment. Every organization was then opened on its own live site and read: its volunteer page, its FAQ, its parent-facing pages, and its published standards where it has any. Nothing in this guide comes from a directory listing, a press release or an aggregator.
We recorded screening as published only where we could read the requirement ourselves. Where a national body publishes nothing but an affiliate does, the organization is marked affiliate and the affiliate page is cited. Where we found nothing, the organization is marked none, and that means exactly one thing: we could not find it published. It is not a claim that the organization does not screen, and in several cases we are confident it screens thoroughly — CASA of Los Angeles is required by California statute to fingerprint every volunteer and publishes nothing about it.
7 organizations turned out not to use volunteer mentors at all. They are named, described and excluded from every ratio in the guide, because vetting a salaried employee is a different obligation under a different law, and counting them as screening failures would be a straightforward error.
103 outbound links were checked for reachability before publication. 5 hosts refuse automated requests but load normally in a browser; they are recorded in the source so that a future link check does not delete a working link on the strength of a 403. 39 organizations carry an editorial caveat where their own site contradicts itself, a figure was undated, or a programme has been repositioned since it was last written about.
Figures for the effect-size literature come from the published meta-analyses themselves, not from secondary summaries. The 1995 Big Brothers Big Sisters trial figures are from the original Public/Private Ventures report and the standardised conversions published by the same team in 2007.
We are a background-check company. That is a conflict of interest in a guide about background checks, so we have tried to resolve it the only way that is worth anything: by publishing the parts that argue against us. Federal law does not require these checks and shields organizations that skip them. The best screening standard we found says a check catches a tenth of the people you are worried about. Both of those are in the guide because leaving them out would have made the rest of it worthless.
