Guidelines for organisations

For Danish click here.

As a starting point, Volunteering.dk (Frivilligjob.dk) approves all posts from organisations and activities seeking volunteers, provided that they have a Danish address and fit our definition of volunteer work (see note 2), and the purpose of the activity is charity and/or for the common good. An organisation can post on the site if it has a Danish CVR number or can provide documentation that they are resident in Denmark.

Nonprofit organisations and initiatives can post listings for volunteer jobs on volunteering.dk for free
Municipal institutions and other public institutions have to pay a fee (some institutions are exempt from paying if their municipality have bought a subscription to Volunteering.dk/Frivilligjob.dk)
We approve posts that complies with the rules listed below.

To use Volunteering.dk you must either:

Appear on SKATs list of charitable organisations
have governing documents which shows that the organisation is non-profit, meaning that the organisation’s income goes to a charitable or non-profit purposes
be a municipal of public institution or project that complies with the guidelines (see note 2)
be an approved religious community, which operates on a non-profit basis (see note 3)

Except from this, are activities initiated by for-profit organisations or A.M.B.A./F.M.B.A.-organisations, but where the organisation can document that the activity itself is non-profit. In these cases, it must be clearly stated in the job post that the activity is non-profit and what any possible profit from the activity would go to.

Political parties and campaigns in general can use Volunteering.dk to find volunteers. If the end goal is volunteers in general for the political party, then the job listing must be placed under the political party in general, and then within the joblisting the tasks of the job can be specified. However, if the end goal is volunteers for a specific party candidate e.g. in times of Municipality Election, then the job listing must be placed under the relevant organisation "Kandidat for [parties navn]" (Candidate for [party name]). Regardless of connection all job listings for political parties and/or candidates must be categorized as "Political work".

In addition, for all submissions, we require that you do NOT:

discriminate in recruiting or hiring of volunteers. e.g. because of gender, age and ethnic, religious, political, sexual or social background. Unless special conditions apply, e.g. that the restriction is due to your target audience, or that the volunteers must be under a certain age because you are a youth organisation. If this is the case, a reasoning for restrictions must be a part of the post and Volunteering.dk reserves the right to reject a reasoning and thus the volunteer job post. (see note 4 for more information on voluntary work in regards to the Discrimination Act)
post volunteer opportunities for anyone under the age of 15
post volunteer opportunities for activities that encourage discrimination, violence or other criminal offenses.
post positions that are or have the any nature of being part-time or full-time work, regardless of whether the job is paid or not. Therefore, internships, wage jobs and any other jobs not taking place in an applicant’s spare time, are not allowed on the site. For this type of positions your organisation can use our sister portal, NGOjob.dk.
include information which a person can be identified with. According to the Danish Data Protection Agency, personal information is any type of information that can contribute to the identification of a certain person, even if this person only can be identified when the information is combined with other types of information. Therefore, Volunteering.dk advises strongly against including in post e.g. personal information such as personal names, personal addresses, ethnicity, political persuasion, sexual orientation, health information etc. In certain cases it can be advisable to include a few personal information (never personal names or addresses) to better describe the context and the terms of the volunteer job, but this must always be agreed with the person(s) affected.

Volunteering.dk reserves the right to request documentation to make sure that the organisation or the activity is non-profit. It is only volunteering.dk’s assessment of whether the activity or organisation can be approved or not, which is the basis for admission to Volunteering.dk.

Expected behavior towards applicants

Volunteering.dk was founded with the aim of enabling contact between organisations and potential volunteers as well as making it easy to establish contact organisations, you want to support by volunteering. Volunteering.dk find it essential that potential volunteers have a good user experience. Therefore, applicants for volunteer positions must be treated with respect and meet serious communication.

If you and your organisation want to use Volunteering.dk to find volunteers, we expect that you:

always behave nicely towards the people who reply to your volunteer job listings
answer applicants as fast as possible and in no more than two weeks. If you know beforehand that you not will be able to answer applicants within two weeks (e.g. because of vacation) we encourage you to deactivate your volunteer job listings. You can always activate them again.
answer all applicants - regardless of whether you can offer them a volunteer job or not

Volunteering.dk automatically follow-up on all applications two weeks after they have been send and we offer applicants to contact organisations for them if they have not received an answer to their application. (Please note that our Support only has access to applications sent via Volunteering.dk's own application system - applications sent via direct mail or external application system is out of reach for our support but we are always ready to help establish contact to an organisation.)

In case we encounter numerous cases of the same organisation not replying to applications, we reserve the right to deactivate the volunteer job listings, where the organisation does not reply to applicants - ultimately we will see no other options than to delete the user profiles behind the listings where applicants or Frivilligjob.dk do not receive response.

Note 1: Guidelines for volunteering in municipal/public institutions and initiatives

As a starting point, Volunteering.dk approves all posts from municipal/public institutions and initiatives (provided the fee pr. listing har been payed or the public institution/municipality has signed up for a subscription).

However, we reserve the right to reject post with activities where:

volunteers must carry out statutory tasks such as nursing, care or treatment of citizens.
volunteers are not involved in the planning of the work or able to influence it.
volunteers are not offered the option to organize themselves (e.g. as an independent group or association)
There is no cooperation between the volunteers and potential paid employees and citizens or users of the institution.
Volunteers' working conditions and working environment are not alright (e.g. if there is no insurance, necessary guidance and respect for boundaries).

Our guidelines are based on recommendations on limits between public responsibility and voluntary engagement (Frivilligcentre & Selvhjælp Danmark).

Note 2: Definition of voluntary work

We define voluntary work as an activity or action, which:

It must be voluntary, meaning that is it performed without physical, legal or economic force. A person must not be threatened with financial or social sanctions (e.g. cut off from a social network) when a person no longer wishes to perform the task.
It must not be payed. However, this does not exclude that a volunteer receives compensation for expenses that the person has in connection with performing the task, such as transport and telephone costs, or that a person receives a highly symbolic compensation for his volunteer work (e.g. in the form of training clothes).
It must be executed to persons outside of the volunteer family and family.
It must benefit others than one and one's family.
It must be formally organised. This means that general help or spontaneous actions cannot be deemed volunteering.

Note 3: Religious associations

Please note, that if the organisation is registered under the field classification code 949100: Religious institutions and associations in the Danish Central Business Register (CVR), the organisation will primarily be assessed according to this guideline. This means that a religious association has to be approved by the Danish State as an acknowledged religious society in order to be approved for using volunteering.dk.

Note 4: Voluntary, unpaid work is not subject to legislation on discrimination or equal treatment

Vounteering.dk seek to promote that voluntary work is for everybody - regardless of one's personal starting point and/or living conditions. This is the reason why Volunteering.dk does not allow discrimination on the basis of the above mentioned factors, and we reserve the right to take down job listings which we consider to be in violation of our guidelines.

This is our practice, even though voluntary work is not covered by the scope of applicable i vist omfang rammerne for indgåelse af overenskomsterdiscrimination legislation (confirmed by the Ministry of Employment, March 2021):

The law prohibiting discrimination in the labour market and so on (the Discrimination Act) is the Danish ratification of the directive 2000/78/EF of November 27^th 2000 which cover the general regulations on equal treatment in employment and business (the Employment Directive), wherein the definition determines that the scope of the directive is "paid employment". Considering the wording of the directive it must therefore be assumed that voluntary work - which is unpaid - falls outside the scope of the directive and, thereby, the scope of the Discrimination Act.

The law on equal treatment of men and women regarding employment and so on (the Equal Treatment Act) is the Danish ratification of the directive 2006/54/EF of July 5^th 2006 which cover the principle of equal opportunities and equal treatment of men and women in relation to employment and business (amendment). The scope of the Equal Treatment Act is "employment and so on". It is about employers exercising their right to manage - and to some extent the framework for conclusion of lective agreements/individual agreements. In "and so on" it is implied that the principle of equal treatment includes businesses such as self-employment, professional employment, partner roles, and membership of employee or employer organizations. Unpaid work falls outside the scope of the law.