New Feature: Background Checks for Youth Sports

At Jersey Watch it’s our goal is to help you manage your sports organization easily.

One of the challenges we’ve noticed for volunteers is managing background checks on coaches, referees, and other adults interacting with athletes. Organizations want to be able to run simple background checks on coaches to keep young athletes safe during the season, but often background screenings have required lots of paperwork and are expensive to order.

It’s a feature request we get often, and that’s why we’ve been working on building an easy background checks feature to allow you to make sure coaches and volunteers are qualified to work with your organization in minutes.

Today there’s a new background checks feature made for youth sports available if you have an account on Jersey Watch, and you can start processing background screenings right away!

The process is quick for you to run through your account, and super simple for coaches to complete.

What does the background checks feature do?

The background checks feature allows organizations to run  screenings on coaches, referees, umpires, or other volunteers online. Several types of background checks can be ordered based on the needs of your organization and the type of coach or volunteer you are screening.

Background checks can help qualify coaches to interact with children by:

• Confirming the coach’s identity
• Flagging any history of felony convictions
• Identifying sex offenders
• Identifying a history of child abuse or domestic violence
• Any driving convictions that could impact the ability to drive young athletes such as DUI or reckless driving

Your organization can invite candidates to complete a background check by entering their name and email into your account. Candidates will receive an email to complete their background check online, and results will be available to your organization within your Dashboard on Jersey Watch.

Never required background checks at your organization? Learn more about how to create a background check policy for your sports organization.

How to get started running background checks

To get started ordering background checks simply click the “Background Checks” feature on the side nav of your account. You’ll connect with our background check partner, Checkr, to get started – it just takes a few minutes.

Here are quick instructions to connect with Checkr > Connect with Checkr in your Jersey Watch account.

After connecting with Checkr, you can invite candidates to complete their background checks directly through your website. You can select from different packages depending on the detail of the screening you’d like to order. For example, if the volunteer is going to be driving kids often, you’ll want to order a background check that screens their driving record.

What’s next with the background checks feature?

We’ll be continuing to improve the background checks feature in the coming months – including the ability to sort background checks by year completed, season, and more. In the future you’ll also be able to invite all of your volunteers in bulk and follow up volunteers who are dragging their feet with one click.

When you get started feel free to send our team any questions, feedback, or requests – it’s super helpful as we continue to improve the feature over time.

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Questions about getting started using the background checks feature? Send us a message at help@jerseywatch.com – we’d be happy to help!