Inclusive volunteering

There are many different types of volunteering opportunities that your organisation can offer. You can consider different groups, for instance, offering volunteering opportunities to young people, or people with disabilities, or recruiting to specific areas of expertise, for example, care of collections.

Diversifying your volunteer base attracts people with different skills and experiences which in turn will enrich your organisation.

Thinking about diversifying your volunteer base

Resources to help you diversify your volunteer opportunities include:

• Volunteer Scotland have pulled together Top Tips to encourage and support organisations to think about offering volunteer opportunities to a variety of different audiences.
• The Army Museums Ogilby Trust’s Volunteer Management Toolkit focuses on supporting organisations to diversify their volunteer base.
• South East Museum Development has pulled together examples of different approaches to diversifying your volunteer base.

Targetting specific groups of volunteers

Here are some other examples of groups or specialisms you could think about.

Young people volunteering 

• The Mayor of London’s: Increasing Volunteer Opportunities for Young People offers tips and advice to organisations planning to work with young people.
• The South West Museum Development – Working with Young People: what to think about before you begin has a practical checklist of things to think about before starting to offer opportunities for young people.

People with disabilities 

These resources are aimed at supporting the inclusion of people with a wide range of disabilities in volunteering:

• MENCAP have produced a useful document Volunteering for Everyone: A guide for organisations who want to include and recruit volunteers who have a learning disability  to encourage organisations to think about recruiting people with a learning disability.
• University of Reading’s Museum and Special Collections Services has produced:
  • • Museum Volunteers Tool Kit: Information for Museum Managers
    • Guidelines for Including Volunteers with Disabilities in Museum Work

Collections care

• The Archives & Records Association: Volunteering in Collections Care explores what you need to have in place to support volunteers in caring for your collections.

Offering a range of different formats for volunteering opportunities

Remote volunteering 

• Opportunities for volunteering off-site are becoming more common, a quick search online returns numerous opportunities for remote volunteering from project based opportunities to ongoing roles.

Micro volunteering

• Volunteer Makers explores the rise in popularity of mirco-volunteering. Micro-volunteering offers people shorter opportunities for volunteering, often delivered remotely, but not always.

Ad hoc opportunities

• Ad-hoc volunteering is also on the rise. Offering people the chance to engage on a one-off or ad-hoc basis.