What to Do When a Volunteer Has a Medical Emergency

Nobody wants to think about a volunteer having a medical emergency on site. It's uncomfortable to plan for, it can feel alarmist to raise with your team, and most coordinators figure they'll deal with it if it ever comes up.

The problem is that "dealing with it in the moment" is much harder when you haven't thought about it in advance. A medical emergency at a volunteer event is rare, but when it happens, the people around it are usually unprepared, and that unpreparedness costs precious time.

This article isn't meant to scare you. It's meant to give you a simple framework so that if something does happen, you already know what to do.

Before the Event: Preparation That Actually Matters

The most valuable thing you can do happens before a single volunteer shows up.

Know where your first aid supplies are. Every venue where you run volunteer shifts should have a first aid kit. Know where it is. If there's an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) on site, know where that is too, and make sure at least one person on your team knows how to use it. Most AEDs walk you through the process step by step, but that's less reassuring if you've never touched one before.

Know which volunteers have first aid or medical training. You almost certainly have volunteers who are nurses, EMTs, or at minimum have completed a first aid course. Find out who they are. You don't need to make it a big deal, but having a mental note that "Marcus has his first aid certification" is genuinely useful information.

Have emergency contacts on file. This is the one that most small nonprofits skip. If a volunteer collapses and can't communicate, who do you call? Having emergency contact information for your volunteers, especially regular ones, is a basic but important safeguard. Your volunteer safety plan should cover this, and if you don't have one yet, it's worth building.

Brief your shift leads. If you use shift leads or team captains, make sure they know what to do in an emergency: call 911, send someone to meet emergency services at the entrance, and notify you immediately. Shift leads are your eyes and ears during events, and preparing them for difficult situations is part of the role. The article on training volunteer shift leads covers the broader conversation, but emergency response is one piece of it.

During an Emergency: What to Do

If a volunteer has a medical emergency while you're on site, here's the basic sequence:

Call emergency services first. This sounds obvious, but in a crisis, people hesitate. Someone always thinks someone else has already called. Designate one specific person to make the call, or make it yourself. Don't assume it's been done.

Send someone to meet emergency services. This matters more than people realize. Emergency responders navigating a large building or a crowded outdoor event need someone to guide them directly to the person. Assign this job to a specific volunteer before the ambulance arrives.

Keep the area clear. A crowd gathering around someone who is ill or injured makes it harder for anyone to help. Calmly and clearly ask people to step back, and mean it.

Keep other volunteers calm and occupied. Depending on the severity of the situation, other volunteers may be shaken. If you have a co-coordinator or a trusted shift lead, have them focus on the rest of the group: keep activities running if appropriate, or gather people in a calm way if the event needs to pause.

Don't try to do everything yourself. Delegate. You should be the coordinator of the response, not the sole responder.

Communicating During and After the Incident

What you say and when you say it matters.

During the event, err toward calm clarity. "We're dealing with a situation and have called for help. Please stay in this area for now" is more useful than silence or an emotional announcement that sends people into a panic.

After emergency services have left and the immediate situation is resolved, address the rest of your volunteers directly. You don't owe anyone details about another person's medical situation. A brief acknowledgment, something like "We had a health situation today and we're grateful everyone responded so well. Thank you for your patience," is usually enough.

If the event needs to end early, make that call clearly and without apology. Your volunteers will understand.

After the Emergency: Steps Many Coordinators Skip

The aftermath is where most coordinators drop the ball, usually because they're relieved it's over and they just want to move on.

Check in with witnesses and volunteers who were close to the incident. Seeing someone in a medical crisis can be genuinely distressing, even for people who seem fine in the moment. A short message the next day, "I wanted to check in after what happened yesterday, let me know if you have any questions or want to talk," goes a long way.

Write an incident report. Even a brief one. What happened, when, where, what actions were taken, and the outcome. This protects your organization and creates a record that may be relevant if there are any questions later. Check what your organization's policy is on incident reporting, and volunteer liability at nonprofits is worth reviewing to understand your obligations.

Debrief with your leadership. If you report to a board or an executive director, let them know what happened. They shouldn't hear about a medical emergency at a volunteer event through the grapevine.

Consider what you'd change. Did you know where the AED was? Did you have emergency contacts? Did your shift leads know what to do? Use the incident to honestly evaluate your preparedness and make any adjustments before the next event.

Building Safety Culture Without Overdoing It

You don't need to run monthly emergency drills or hand every volunteer a laminated safety card. What you do need is a basic level of preparedness that you can act on without thinking.

That means: knowing where your first aid supplies are, having a clear sense of who on your team has medical training, keeping emergency contacts on file, and making sure your shift leads have thought about this at least once.

Preparing volunteers for difficult situations is a broader conversation about readiness, and a lot of it applies here. The goal isn't to make everyone anxious. It's to make sure the first time someone faces a hard situation, they're not also figuring out the basics for the first time.

How Volunteer Shift Manager Helps

Volunteer Shift Manager keeps your volunteer contact information in one place, which matters when you need it fast. Knowing that you can pull up a volunteer's emergency contact or get a shift lead's phone number immediately is part of being prepared.

One Conversation Is Enough to Start

You don't need a formal emergency preparedness program to do better than most coordinators. Have one honest conversation with your co-coordinator or a trusted shift lead about what you'd each do if something happened on site. Walk through the venue and find the first aid kit and the AED. Check that you have contact info for your regular volunteers.

That's it. That's the preparation. Most emergencies that are handled well are handled well because someone took ten minutes to think about them in advance.