SW Museum Skills Online: Foundations of Volunteer Involvement in Museums

This three-hour session, with breaks, covers:

• An introduction to good practice in volunteer involvement
• How museums can plan recruitment and induction that appeals to volunteer motivations and meets museum needs
• Tools to help you to support and retain volunteers
• An introductory Briefing about our Volunteering Fit for the Future programme including how to apply to take part

Please note this is an active session on Zoom, involving practical exercises and breaking into online discussion groups with other participants for some parts of the session.

Who should attend?

This course is aimed at those working or volunteering in museums, for whom volunteer co-ordination is the main part of their role. It may also be helpful for trustees and senior managers with overall responsibility for volunteering, to develop awareness of strategic approaches to volunteer involvement and the tasks and skills involved in delivering a successful volunteer programme.

What will you learn?

This course will help you to:

• Ensure volunteer recruitment is appropriate for your museum and reflects good practice
• Develop attractive voluntary roles and role descriptions which meet potential volunteers’ motivations as well as the needs of your museum
• Put an effective recruitment and induction process in place
• Advertise and promote your voluntary roles
• Retain volunteers by providing effective support and direction
• Learn about MDSW's Volunteering Fit for the Future programme, how it supports museum to plan for volunteer involvement and with funding towards realising these plans

How does this meet the Accreditation standard?

1.3 - Appropriate management arrangements and workforce structure

About the trainer

Eleanor Moore, MA AMA, is Museum Development South West’s Sustainable Volunteering Officer. She provides advice and support for museums on involving volunteers, helping them to achieve their goals with their communities. She is also responsible for running projects to help museums to become more inclusive. Her background is in social and community history curatorship, with experience of volunteer management, collections and engagement projects.

Contact details

Email: museum.development@bristol.gov.uk

Phone: Jenni Orme, Senior Museum Development Programme Officer - 07824 165063

How will this session be delivered and what equipment do I need?

This session will be delivered online using Zoom a cloud based video conferencing service. The service is free to use, all you need is either a laptop, tablet/ iPad or phone. Your device will need to be able to stream video and sound. If you are using a laptop you can simply connect via your web browser. If using a tablet/ iPad or phone you will need to download the app (free to download) to connect to the session. Full instructions on how to join the session will be issued direct to the email address provided at the point of booking before the session takes place.

How do we use the data you supply us?

* For full details on how the information supplied to us as part of the booking process is used please see our Privacy Policy here: https://southwestmuseums.org.uk/privacy-policy/ By booking on you agree to have your data stored and used by us in accordance with this policy.