Nursing home volunteer onboarding has been quite a disaster — should I still bother?

I’ve been trying to find nursing home volunteer opportunities, and I’ve been in contact with one place since this past summer before I came back to school.

At the very start of the semester, I went in person, filled out their volunteer application, and handed over all my medical clearance documents so they could get me onboarded ASAP. The volunteer director told me everything looked good and that I’d get a call from HR about orientation.

Since then, it’s been a mess. I’ve followed up every single week. Week 1: “Oh, sorry, HR just left today.” Weeks 2–3: “We have no idea where HR is.” Week 4: “HR is gone now, we need to talk to our supervisor and figure out what to do with you.” They even said they’re not sure they can find my application anymore and I might have to come back in person to fill everything out again.

On top of that, they keep asking me for my phone number. At least 5 times now. Every time they promise they’ll call me the next week, they don’t. When I call them, they say they lost my number again.

At this point, I’m just at a loss for words. If they actually manage to get this together and call me this week about next steps, is it even worth volunteering there anymore? I’m already volunteering at a children’s hospital as a child life volunteer, but I wanted to get experience with elderly populations too.

The whole experience so far has been quite negative that I’m questioning whether things would ever go smoothly there. Plus, their Google reviews are horrendous (people didn’t even want to give one star), and when I visited, the place smelled bad. Some people I’ve talked to said nursing home reviews are usually only 1-2 stars though, and they always smell bad, so maybe this is just the norm?

Would it be a good idea to turn this down and look into other opportunities even if they actually figure things out this week?