How do we keep the volunteer register and log volunteering hours?

What the law says

• Art. 11 para. (10) of Law no. 78/2014: the host organisation must keep records of volunteers, of the duration and type of activities performed and of volunteer evaluations, based on criteria set in the internal regulation.
• Art. 11 para. (4): the volunteer register is kept by the host organisation, and registration precedes the start of the activity.
• Art. 23^1: breaching art. 11 paras. (4), (6) and (10) is an offence, fined 10,000 to 20,000 lei; the regime of Government Ordinance no. 2/2001 applies, so half the minimum may be paid within 15 days.
• Art. 10 para. (4): the period and the number of volunteering hours are mandatory elements of the certificate, so the records must be exact.
• Law no. 78/2014 sets no hour cap for volunteers; art. 12 letter d) only provides the right to adequate free time.
• The 6-hours-a-day and 30-hours-a-week limits come from the Labour Code, for employed minors, and do not apply to volunteers.
• Volunteer data is personal data and falls under Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR).

What correct records look like in practice

1. You enter the agreement in the volunteer register, with a number and date, before the first day of activity.
2. You assign the volunteer to a specific activity or project, with the type of activity recorded.
3. You log hours per day or per event, not at the end of the year.
4. You complete the volunteer evaluation using the criteria from the internal regulation.
5. You issue the certificate with the period and the total hours taken straight from the log.

Practical examples

• An association with 120 volunteers at a festival logs 4 shifts of 6 hours and obtains 2,880 volunteering hours reportable to the funder.
• At a project audit, the funder asks for the log on activity A2, and the organisation produces it per volunteer and per day, not as an annual total.
• A foundation that kept records only in a local file loses the data in a failure and can no longer issue certificates for 60 volunteers.

Common mistakes

• The organisation has signed agreements but no register — precisely the act fined at 10,000 lei.
• Only the total hours are kept, without the type of activity, so the certificate cannot prove specialist experience.
• There is no internal regulation, although the law refers to the criteria set in it.
• Volunteer evaluations are missing, although they are part of the record-keeping obligation.
• Volunteer data circulates in messaging groups, with no legal basis and no GDPR control.

How 4ong helps

• The volunteer database is the very register required by law: agreement, number, date, period, status.
• You assign volunteers to activities and projects, and hours are logged per day or per shift.
• Totals per volunteer, per activity and per project are computed automatically, ready to report to the funder.
• Evaluations are completed against your own criteria, defined once in the platform.
• Access to volunteer data is role-based, which helps with GDPR compliance.