Determining the Criterion Weights for the Selection of Volunteers in Humanitarian Organizations by the Best-Worst Method

Today, it is vital for humanitarian organizations operating in many different fields to select volunteers from the determining criteria according to the needs of the institution. Failure to select volunteers in accordance with the institution's needs may cause the volunteers to be unable to continue their duties and interrupt the institution's work. When choosing volunteers, it is essential for effective volunteer management to classify (expert, experienced, inexperienced, and insufficient) them according to the institution’s needs and assign them starting from the volunteer in the best class volunteer when necessary. The aim of this study is to determine the criteria weights in the classification of volunteers who want to participate in search and rescue activities in humanitarian aid organizations according to the criteria determined before their assignment. In this study, a questionnaire is applied to field experts in Turkey to determine the most important and least important criteria, then criteria weights are calculated by using the Best-Worst Method (BWM). The findings obtained as a result of our study are evaluated and suggestions are made on how to improve it for future studies.