Volunteers, Vulnerable Clients, and Tight Budgets: Workplace Violence Prevention for Nonprofits

Just like their for-profit neighbors, nonprofits are incredibly varied, in what they do, who they serve, and in their organization’s size.

And like for-profits, many nonprofits must comply with California’s violence prevention requirements, either because they’re public facing, or because they have 10 or more employees (volunteers and independent contractors count).

Doing so effectively protects your employees, your organization, and your officers, from some of the workplace violence prevention challenges that nonprofits face.

For some nonprofits, the biggest violence risks come from those you serve. This is not a judgement about the work you do, it just comes with the territory.

And for some nonprofits, the biggest violence risk comes not from those you serve, but from those who believe you shouldn’t help those that you help, and their willingness to take violent action over their grievances and resentments.

Sounds far fetched? It’s not. Think about the Tree of Life shooter who was motivated into a horrific act of violence based upon his hatred for HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a nonprofit that helps immigrants.

Nonprofits also have a unique workplace violence challenge because many of those that work for you are volunteers rather than paid employees. Many of the volunteers are motivated to volunteer because they’re true believers in your organization and what it does. All great. But they can also downplay safety risks.

And finally, nonprofits can face economic headwinds which can make workplace violence prevention harder to budget.

According to a July 1, 2026 article in the Philanthropy Daily nonprofits are facing one of those times, “The current fiscal climate is placing extraordinary strain on nonprofits, especially smaller organizations that are already operating with limited resources.”

Here’s how some of these challenges play out and what you can do to address them.

Volunteers

Nonprofits often rely on volunteers to help them provide their services. But, under California law volunteers must be treated the same as employees when it comes to workplace violence prevention.

So they count towards the number of employees you have and they must be involved in the different assessment processes, remediation processes, and have input into the types of training they receive.

But volunteers’ schedules are often limited, and that makes obtaining their active involvement, in identifying and remedying safety hazards, as well as the types of training provided, harder to do.

It also makes getting them up to speed on the safety hazards they face, and ways to address those safety hazards too, harder to coordinate.

And because volunteers sometimes have an idyllic view of the work you do, they may may need more violence prevention training, and extra reminders to apply violence prevention strategies in order to keep them safe.

This puts a greater onus on volunteer coordinators, supervisors, and trainers who because they are more likely to understand the safety hazards faced by the volunteers, and how to adjust the volunteers work practices in order to reduce the risk from those safety hazards.

Actively engaging with those who oversee volunteer workers is one of the best ways to ensure the safety of those volunteers.

Vulnerable Clients

While there are many different types of nonprofits that serve different roles, some provide services to vulnerable populations, which can lead to increased safety risks to both your employees and to other invitees that you serve.

In an ideal world, this wouldn’t affect workplace safety. But in the real world it does. Those who you serve can be a threat to those who provide the services or to others who receive your services.

Further, organizations that provide services to vulnerable populations must work from locations where the people they help are located. And that can mean working in higher risk areas.

So safety risks for nonprofits can come from members of the public, from the invitees that you serve, and from the family members of those you serve.

That means implementing a program focused on providing training in multiple strategies to avoid physical harm, becomes much more important so that volunteers and employees have multiple safety tools at their fingertips to address any threat to their safety.

Budget Constraints

While there are nonprofits with operational budgets that rival for profit organizations, many nonprofits operate on smaller budgets and have fewer staff available to implement workplace violence prevention requirements.

And this can be compounded by the workplace violence challenges that nonprofits face. Implementing an effective workplace violence prevention program that meets California’s requirements means thinking creatively, and organizing your processes to make them as efficient as possible.

Nonprofits may also have different work locations, and may even have employees and volunteers that work in the community rather than in a typical workplace setting.

California requires that each workplace have its own violence prevention plan, and this also includes employees that work at other people’s locations, whether that’s their workplace, or their residence.

Keeping costs down requires developing an overall plan for the organization, and then tailoring that plan to each different workplace. In some situations you can use the same information that’s constant at each location to form the basis of the prevention plan, and then customize that plan to address the specifics of each different work location.

Doing so allows for keeping costs down, without scrimping on safety. In the end, it’s by understanding the specifics of the work your employees and volunteers perform, and the clients you serve, that will allow you to create an effective workplace violence prevention plan and then to implement it.

Whether nonprofit, or for-profit, small employers trying to comply with California’s workplace violence prevention law face hurdles that larger employers with dedicated HR and security teams don’t face. I’ll soon have details on my new book, and implementation toolkit designed to help small employers develop and implement an effective workplace violence prevention program that protects your employees and your organization from the many harms caused by workplace violence.