This document provides guidelines for planning the involvement of spontaneous volunteers (SVs) in incident response and recovery. It is intended to help organizations to establish a plan to consider whether, how and when SVs can provide relief to a coordinated response and recovery for all identified hazards. It helps identify issues to ensure the plan is risk-based and can be shown to prioritize the safety of SVs, the public they seek to assist and incident response staff.

This document is intended for use by organizations with responsibility for, or involvement in, part or all of the planning for working with SVs. It is applicable to all types and sizes of organizations that are involved in the planning for, and management of, SVs (e.g. local, regional, and national governments, statutory bodies, international and non-governmental organizations, businesses and public and community groups).

The range of tasks performed by SVs can require only basic planning (e.g. for people who are first on the scene), or a plan that is more complex (e.g. for people who travel to the affected area to volunteer).

Coordinating the participation of volunteers who are affiliated to voluntary or professional organizations to provide relief is not within the scope of this document.