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10 Background Screening Best Practices For Sports Teams & Leagues

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This resource is proudly brought to you by a PCA Trusted Resource - Verified Volunteers. Verified Volunteers helps youth sports organizations gain confidence in their coaches by delivering thorough and compliant background checks. By enabling coaches to order, manage and share their background checks via a secure online platform, they create a community of vetted coaches and help youth sports organizations save time and money.

By following these ten best practices below, you can best set up your team or league for success:

1) Screen Everyone

Screen everyone – coaches, referees, volunteers, and even board members – not screening everyone means you are risking your organization’s assets, reputation, and overall safety.

2) There is no "one & done"

Require all individuals to be rescreened annually, as well as be monitored on a monthly basis to help identify new crimes.

3) Check the NSOPW Sex Offender Registry

Rely on the Department of Justice National Sex Offender registry (NSOPW). It is the only up-to-date and comprehensive sex offender search available.

4) Look to primary sources

State and county records databases only identify that criminal records are available. If possible, check “primary sources” directly at the courthouse.

5) Multiple layers of screening

Multiple background check sources need to be searched to fill in database gaps and to help uncover potential new information. Checking the NSOPW registry, Nationwide and courthouse records is a good place to start.

6) Don't trust "instant" checks

Services that tout near-immediate results are from online or stale aggregated databases and are inaccurate and out of date, sometimes by several years.

To review all ten best practices and share with your team/league manager, please DOWNLOAD HERE.

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