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NOVA was founded in 1975 by pioneer researchers and victim advocates in rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, prosecutors’ offices, law enforcement agencies, and community-based organizations. Its early activities were supported through the volunteer efforts and donations of its founders.

The Board of Directors:
NOVA's Board of Directors is comprised of eighteen elected members who are well representative of the victims' movement: professionals and volunteers from the fields of criminal justice, mental health, victim services and business. They are elected for four-year terms by people attending the membership meeting at NOVA's annual conference. The Board of Directors can appoint individuals to fill vacancies. In addition, NOVA has an Honorary Advisory Board of members who are prominent figures from the business and professional worlds. No remuneration is made to any Board member, all of whom participate at their own or their employer's expense.

The staff often draws on the special skills of both elected and appointed Board members when responding to problems in the field and requests for assistance; the Board truly represents experienced leadership in what is still a continually expanding field of social service and jurisprudence.

See our Board Member page for the current roster of elected and appointed Board members.

Staff:
NOVA currently is an organization with several full-time staff, two part-time staff, a part-time controller, and frequently adjunct staff; under a 1994 policy, NOVA intends to maintain its core staff, using adjunct staff where possible as specialists on specific projects.

See our Staff page for our current roster of full-time and part-time paid staff members.

NOVA also relies heavily on the services of local volunteers (of whom most have completed a 40-hour crisis counseling course), and a national volunteer corps of practitioners from fields as diverse as criminal justice, social service, the military, clergy, medicine, and mental health. In addition to those practitioners, who perform training and technical assistance on a wide array of victim-related topics, NOVA’s National Crisis Response Team database houses in excess of 7,000 volunteer crisis responders. NOVA, as a matter of philosophy and practicality, is committed to the continued involvement of volunteers from the community who are concerned about crime victims.

NOVA is committed to an affirmative action plan for hiring staff. It is also committed to ensuring that all staff and volunteers have training in victim services. Currently, all NOVA staff members have had a minimum of forty hours training in victim crisis counseling and all have attended public speaking and training-of-trainers courses.

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