Safeguarding Self-Assessment
A 30-indicator readiness check your team completes on its own.
Everything on this page stays in your browser. There is no registration and no data collection: your answers are never submitted, saved, or transmitted anywhere, and no one — including me — can see them. Close the tab and they are gone. Use Print / save as PDF below to keep your results.
How this works
A benchmark, not a compliance check. No U.S. nonprofit is bound by the international standard, and completing this assessment does not make an organization “compliant” with it — nor does a low score mean any rule has been broken. Because no U.S. baseline exists, the assessment simply measures readiness against the most developed benchmark available, as decomposed and adapted for U.S. organizations in the Project’s research. The score shows how much of a complete protection system is in place — nothing more, nothing less.
Who completes it. Your own team — no outside consultant, no facilitator, no cost. It works best when two or three people complete it together: someone who knows day-to-day program operations, someone who knows hiring and volunteer management, and a board member or executive.
How to score. For each of the 30 indicators, mark Yes (1 point) only if the statement is true now and you could show evidence of it — a document, a record, a dated log. Leave it unmarked (0 points) if it is partly true, planned, informal, or undocumented. Being strict is the point: a generous score hides exactly the gaps this tool exists to find.
Time required. About one hour. The six domain subtotals and your total out of 30 are calculated as you go.
Scope note
This is an organizational self-assessment tool, not legal advice. It does not certify compliance with any law, funder condition, accreditation standard, or international framework, and it does not state the law of any state. It measures organizational readiness against the benchmark developed in the Project’s published research. Organizations should have safeguarding measures reviewed by counsel licensed in their state. The author is not admitted to practice law in the United States.
What the SCP column means. Each indicator is keyed to the element of the international standard it corresponds to (SCP-1.1 through SCP-6.3), so your results map onto the Policy Template and onto the published research. The indicators are the Crosswalk Project’s operationalization of those obligations, not the text of the standard itself. You can ignore the codes when scoring.
Your results
| Domain | Subtotal | Out of |
|---|---|---|
| A — Governance and Policy | 0 | 5 |
| B — Code of Conduct | 0 | 5 |
| C — Screening and Recruitment | 0 | 5 |
| D — Training and Awareness | 0 | 5 |
| E — Reporting and Response | 0 | 5 |
| F — Partners, Records, and Review | 0 | 5 |
| Total | 0 | 30 |
What your score means
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0–11 Foundational
Your organization relies mainly on the good judgment of individuals. This is where most small and mid-sized nonprofits begin — it reflects the absence of any national baseline, not a failure of care. Start with the companion Policy Template’s Sections 1–3 — the starter path takes one board meeting and one staff orientation to establish, using only the published guides.
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12–20 Developing
The rules largely exist, but the systems that make them real are uneven — typically screening or training is in place while reporting and records are not. Work through your two lowest domains using the matching sections of the Policy Template and the Training Outlines.
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21–26 Established
A working safeguarding system is in place. The remaining gaps are usually documentation, partner flow-down, or the annual review cycle — the things that prove the system works to a funder or a board. Close them item by item.
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27–30 Advanced
Your organization exceeds what any general U.S. requirement asks of nonprofits. Keep the review cycle running, and consider sharing what worked — sector-level practice improves when organizations that have solved this describe how.
Using your results
Record the date and the score. Re-run the self-assessment in 12 months, or after any substantiated incident, and compare — a dated pair of scores is among the most useful evidence of progress you can show a funder.
If you are willing to share what worked and what did not, the Adopter Feedback Form (Tool 3) takes 15–20 minutes and directly shapes the next published version. The Policy Template (Tool 1) is the companion for closing the gaps this assessment finds.
Released under CC BY 4.0. Organizations may adapt this instrument freely. Suggested attribution: “Adapted from the U.S. Nonprofit Safeguarding Crosswalk Project, Safeguarding Self-Assessment v1.0 (Gul, 2026), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21856846.”