Community Service Procedure

This page details how to determine whether a prospective community service volunteer should be allowed to spend time at Free Geek. These instructions are intended to aid those at the front desk when faced with a person who needs to complete community service hours and would like to do so at Free Geek.

The HR committee is who you should point questions to.

Note: volunteers working at Free Geek for community service credit cannot earn double hours.

General Goals
Free Geek is a good place for people who've been down on their luck to gain good job skills, meet positive people, and possibly turn their lives around. While part of our goal is to provide opportunities for empowerment and growth, we also want to protect our volunteers and our more valuable gizmos from assault, harassment, and theft. Because of these two goals, we welcome people who need to complete community service, but only if we can be sure they won't mess with our volunteers or our stuff.

Multnomah County Community Court
We often get people from this court. These people tend to need about 16 hours of volunteer time, and have been convicted of very minor crimes. The court does not allow those who have been convicted of theft to come to Free Geek.

Since they're only here for 16 hours, and we know they're probably not going to mess with our people or stuff, it's not really worth it to spend too much time figuring out what to do with them.

What to do
Go ahead and just let these people straight in. They usually call on the phone - once you've established that they're from Multnomah County Community Court, tell them these things:
 * 1) Come down for the tour, get into the system as a 'general volunteer', and sign up for thier first shift (pretty much like any regular volunteer).
 * 2) Come in for their shifts, log their hours, and sign up for their next shift.  Repeat until all their hours are done (like all other volunteers).
 * 3) When they're done with their hours, they should have the person at the front desk print out their hours.  Then they need to find a staff-person (Shawn's the best choice if she's available), who will be able to put the special, required-by-the-court-or-else-they-don't-get-any-credit, sticker on the back of their time sheet.

You're done!

Other Courts
First, ask these four questions:
 * 1) Do you have a history of theft?
 * 2) Do you have a history of violence against people or things?
 * 3) Do you have any stalking orders against you?
 * 4) Can you be around children?

Notice that these questions skate around what the community service volunteer did to get the service assigned to them in court (we're not allowed to ask what they were convicted of, I don't think). They also ask about their history, because sometimes an isolated charge is no reason for alarm, but continued charges should raise a red flag. Additionally, if being around children will violate their parole, they can't come here, as children help out at Free Geek often.

If the prospective volunteer's answers to the above questions are satisfactory (No, no, no, and yes, or - in very rare cases - they seem very upstanding and trustworthy despite the fact that they've done something stupid once), and they've taken the tour, they can volunteer here. But first we need some information.

Second, send the following in an email to the HR committee "hr [at] freegeek [dot] org":


 * Volunteer's name
 * Phone number
 * Email
 * County/court
 * Parole officer/representative (someone we can contact if there's a problem)
 * Representative's contact information