FAQ: Volunteer Makers

Question 1: What is Volunteer Makers and why should it be of interest to us?

Volunteer Makers was created because advertising volunteer roles (with an unwieldy downloadable application form) was proving a barrier for a more diverse volunteer audience.   Another barrier was people not having the time to commit to regular volunteering, but preferring ad hoc or micro volunteering, as and when it fitted into their busy lives.

Volunteer Makers is a digital tech product, training programme and volunteer engagement model that helps you create a volunteer community. This model blends volunteering with public participation, marketing and digital and encourages an organisation-wide approach to creating ideas that will engage, grow and inspire your volunteers and supporters.  The tech is easy to set-up and with our license programme it is constantly evolving and improving.

Using digital to drive Volunteer Makers means you can personalise engagement with your volunteers, matching activities with the skills, interests and time commitment of that people have to offer.

Economic uncertainty means that engaging and growing volunteers is important.  We also need to take account of shifting volunteer profiles/demographics and people’s motivations for volunteering.

With Volunteer Makers, the volunteer activity is gamified as well as personalised. Gamification is achieved by presenting the volunteering activity as challenges and allowing volunteers to bank their challenges in their own personalised control panel.

Question 2: Volunteer Makers can help me grow my volunteers by increasing numbers of volunteers who can commit smaller amounts of volunteering time, but how does it affect those who regularly volunteer who we already depend on?

Volunteer Makers personalises volunteering activity, including personalising activity for your existing volunteers who regularly volunteer with you. For example, with Volunteer Makers volunteer activity is categorised as:

  • Just a minute (volunteers can give just minutes of their time)
  • Give a day (one-off projects to support your organisation)
  • Regular help (your regular volunteers)
  • Work as a team (bringing in groups of people)

You can even create your own categories.

As you can see, the volunteer activity is bundled in a way to match the time commitment of the volunteer, while also attracting regular help. Organisations who are using the Volunteer Makers model and technology have found that regular volunteers often help drive the Volunteer Makers model by getting involved with the ideas for challenges or volunteer activities.

Question 3: If I use a Volunteer Makers model, increasing my volunteer base, doesn’t that ultimately mean the loss of paid jobs?

We have found that when organisations grow their volunteer base with a Volunteer Makers model they are also increasing visitors to events, café and shop etc.

This equates to actual income and can also create opportunities for match funding as you are developing and building your audience. In our experience, Volunteer Makers sustains jobs, rather than replaces jobs.

The types of activity bringing in larger numbers of supporters are not the same as full or part-time jobs, often the activity can be done remotely using digital.

Digital micro-volunteering is known to attract younger volunteers, which we know is important to an organisation’s long-term sustainability.

Question 4: Does Volunteer Makers work better for larger organisations than smaller organisations?

We have been working with many types of organisations, including larger (national) and smaller, local authority-led, independent and volunteer-led. Smaller organisations have dedicated people who cover many functions, this can sometimes be a benefit when adopting an organisation-wide approach.

Volunteer Makers, because it tends to drive a strategic approach, works well with partnerships and networks.

 Question 5: How does Volunteer Makers tie in with Museum Accreditation.

Volunteer Makers helps museums work in ways that meet several of the requirements of Arts Council England’s Accreditation Scheme for museums.

1.4 Forward Planning: the Volunteer Makers platform allows museums to record volunteer input (hours, activity and value) at the museum consistently and accurately – essential data to include in the review of your museum’s operating environment. The Volunteer Makers model supports the recruitment of volunteers to carry out the activities set out in the Forward Plan. It encourages the museum to identify the skills needed and activities involved in delivering its objectives and to break them down into ‘challenges’ which volunteers can sign up to.

1.7 An appropriate workforce: The Volunteer Makers platform gives museums accurate data on the numbers of volunteers they have, the hours they work and the value of their input. By encouraging an organisation-wide approach the model helps museums identify skills gaps and improve recruitment, induction and training.

3.1 Users: Through the systematic gathering of information on the people who volunteer for it, Volunteer Makers model and platform provides the museum with great data on its users and helps museums devise plans to increase and diversify volunteer involvement through re-energised and targeted volunteer recruitment. Do you have a question for us? Please e-mail hello@volunteermakers.org.

Question 6: Does it comply with data protection rules?

Where relevant, Volunteer Makers follows the guidelines laid down by the ICO in the 2018 GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations).

However, in practical terms the majority of the data protection responsibility lies with the client as it concerns the use to which data is put and you own and control this data.

In the ICO guide, the two areas that usually apply to Volunteer Makers are Principle 7 (security) and Principle 8 (international).

In terms of security, we ensure personal information input into a site is encrypted through use of SSL Certification on appropriate areas of the site.

The physical hosting of data takes place on our dedicated servers, with:

  • 24/7 server side support
  • Brute force and cyber attack detection/prevention
  • Hosting is locked down to authorised personnel/office staff

We work with one of the leading hosting partners in Europe and they have some of the most stringent security measures in place.

In terms of Principle 8, we are required to ensure ”personal data shall not be transferred to a country or territory outside the EEA unless that country or territory ensures an adequate level of protection for the rights and freedoms of data subjects in relation to the processing of personal data.” All data is hosted with our hosting partner on UK -based servers and is fully compliant with this regulation.

In compliance with GDPR regulations, all contact preferences require consent and are opt-in rather than opt out.

We ask that you create a privacy statement to appear on your VM platform. Information on how to create a clear, compliant privacy statement can be found here 

As for any data processing, we recommend that you set your own internal rules about how long you will retain dormant data and document it in a data retention policy and set up a system to make sure it’s implemented.