Two companies provide similar services for criminal background checks for organizations that rely heavily on volunteer services: Verified Volunteers and True Hire. They both provide similar services and similar means of application, search and reporting results, but their costs are different.
Both would allow the Florida Native Plant Society to be the Primary Organization, with Chapter volunteers nominated for Chapter office positions providing personal information on-line individually and privately. Both require the use of the Social security number. Both provide automatic search and notification of results (no person in either company has access to the information and results) and both allow only the FNPS designated person (assumedly, the Executive Director) and the nominee to view the resulting report. Both allow payment by either the volunteer or the organization, once the originating fee is paid (a one-time administration fee for the life of the organizations use of the service.)
Verified Volunteers’ Comprehensive package provides a national criminal records check, a *** Offender Registry check, and a check of the criminal records of the State and County of residence. The fee for each Comprehensive criminal records check is $38.99 without additional fees for aliases/maiden names, but with the access fee that some county clerks in Florida charge for access to county court records. This Comprehensive fee includes checking records in different counties for the previous 7 years. The Basic package of $17.00 does not include checking county of Residence records for the past 7 years. The program provides a monthly update of each report for a year. The one-time fee to administer the program is $200.00
True Hire’s Standard package provides a national criminal records check, a *** Offender registry check, and a check of the criminal records of the State and County of Residence. (The basic fee does not include the check of county records, so I am not including it as an option. Many times counties and states do not regularly report criminal records to the national crime index computer, so a check of the county’s records is necessary) The fee for the Standard package is $18.99 with additional fees for aliases/maiden names ($10.00) and the access fee that some county clerks in Florida charge for access to county court records. This Standard package does not include the 7 year history check of other County of Residences. The $39.99 package provides a review of other Counties of residence for the past 2 years. The one-time fee to administer the program is $99.00.
