Pioneers Archives - Volunteer Makers

COMMUNITY MAKERS HELPS SERVICES IN NOTTS FULLY BIND TOGETHER

“It’s a win-win situation for us, our volunteers and the communities they are drawn from,” says Liz Guildford, projects and logistics manager at Inspire: Culture, Learning & Libraries.

Liz is talking about Tickbox Marketing’s Community Makers tech, which Inspire have been using since a soft launch with her organisation during lock down. Community Makers expands the Volunteer Makers‘ platform and can be used across locations and partnerships.

Community Makers helps Inspire attract, manage, organise and provide challenges (which are actions, activities or events) for hundreds of volunteers throughout Nottinghamshire.

Inspire delivers a variety of educational and cultural services in the county and just beyond: These include running libraries, delivering adult learning, running arts projects and even providing music education.

The diverse nature of Inspire’s remit and the varying communities and premises in which they are delivered provided the organisation with a challenge when it came to engaging the community.

“Things were organised ad hoc, with volunteers recruited by local services and usually only working in a specific role,” explains Liz.

“There were no tailored criteria in place for these people and they had to go through the very formal and rigid county council recruitment process.”

Now, Community Makers – run by a dedicated Volunteering Officer within Inspire – can tailor specific opportunities, suggest new tasks and tap in to the micro-volunteering trend with people helping in very specific ways, when they can.

“It’s absolutely brilliant having all our volunteer data in one place. Not only does it help us cut down on paperwork, but there is a cross-pollination with volunteers.

“People who may have, for example, worked helping out in a library on occasions are seeing our challenges to help with the running of a one-off cultural event in the evening and getting involved,” Liz notes.

“Some challenges are big and require regular commitments, but others can be as small as helping publicise some of our work on social media – even a retweet helps!”.

As well as migrating over their regular volunteers, Inspire has found the technology has helped inspire new and more diverse helpers to get involved and participate.

“Whereas traditionally, many volunteers were retired people and more likely to be found in more prosperous areas of the county, we are seeing all kinds of people engage now,” Liz expands.

“We have people looking for work experience to help them get a job, and we can point them to services that support them, and a lot of younger volunteers. We even have some 16-year-olds involved.”

But how are older volunteers finding the new platform?

“I did at first wonder how some might manage,” admits Liz, “But the feedback has been positive and many love using it.”

“The Pandemic has helped many people to acquire new online skills and confidence, and, of course, they can still telephone our Volunteers Office if they want to get in touch that way.”

At present, Inspire’s Community Makers platform is offering 24 challenges for volunteers, but as the various teams within the organisation start using it, Liz hopes this will grow to 50 plus within the next few months.

The take up for the current challenges has been impressive:

“We always believed once we got it up and running it would take off – and it has,” she concludes.

“Volunteers feel like they are really part of the teams they are working with, they are being ambassadors for our services and are bringing in fresh ideas and enthusiasm. It is really bonding us with the communities we serve.”

Laptop displaying UOC Volunteer Makers website

UNIVERSITY’S CHALLENGES ARE A HIT WITH VOLUNTEERS

by Geona

Housing some of the most valuable and irreplaceable artefacts in Britain, University of Cambridge Museums is a heritage group like few others.

With eight widely different museums and a botanical gardens, all operating in a semi-autonomous manner and tied to one of the world’s greatest universities, UCM has a history of working closely with local communities in innovative ways.

It was following in this tradition that UCM began working with Tickbox Marketing’s Volunteer Makers team a few years ago, unveiling a new volunteering platform driven by Volunteer Makers tech in its website last year.

“Volunteer Makers gave our institutions a joined-up approach, while allowing each museum to set its own challenges and adapt things to its own needs – it isn’t a prescriptive ‘one size fits all’ approach,” explains Nikki Hughes, UCM’s Opening Doors project co-ordinator.

Nikki has championed the Volunteer Makers system at UCM and as familiarity grew with the concept, it is now used by most of the institutions to engage and inspire volunteers and manage their tasks.

UCM now has over 1000 Volunteer Makers, from all walks of life, and these helpers interact with its museums in a variety of ways.

“For some it’s completing a challenge that may only take an hour or so, for others it is helping with a specific task for a day, while others take up front-of-house duties on an ongoing basis,” Nikki notes.

“From our point of view, Volunteer Makers has been a great boon in managing the administration of this. In the past, we might have had bits of paper flying about between museums whereas now its digital, its measurable and we can track precisely,” she adds.

The Covid-19 lockdown has meant UCM’s institutions have had to get inventive in its challenges – but as could be expected – it has risen to the challenge.

Volunteer tasks could be as diverse as recording nature sounds from their own gardens, to getting involved in the Museum Remix project – a way in which the public could get involved in reinterpreting USM’s artefacts, and help redesign displays and layout.

As the doors to the various collections begin to open up again, Volunteer Makers has helped recruit volunteers to work in front-of-house roles, in outreach work and to run specialist tours.

“Volunteer Makers has made filling these roles so much easier and just as importantly it has allowed us to keep the public engaged with us while the lockdown kept doors closed,” Nikki says.

“We wanted to keep the community engaged with and interested in UCM and Volunteer Makers has been an invaluable tool for doing this,” she concludes.

Keeping Suffolk’s past alive and vibrant – with Volunteer Makers

by Claire Sully

History is all around us: It’s yesterday, last month, last year, as well as a century or a millennia ago.

For an archive service, the challenge is making the past “live on” and giving those in the present a sense of place and their roots within it.

Working with Volunteer Makers has helped Suffolk Archives’ goals of community engagement as well as enabling the service to work smarter.

Developed by Tickbox Marketing, who have years of experience of working with the heritage and culture sector, Volunteer Makers is a digital platform which allows charities to maximise public engagement, allowing people to micro-volunteer and participate in specific tasks as well as volunteer on an ongoing basis.

“Volunteer Makers has been a real boon. We can “sell” what we are doing in a much more attractive way and to a wider audience,” says Rebecca Harpur, volunteer engagement co-ordinator at Suffolk Archives.

Despite the challenges of the Pandemic, Rebecca and her colleagues had a busy 2020, moving many thousands of documents, maps, photographs, diagrams and artefacts to a new HQ on the Ipswich campus of the University of Suffolk.

The new base has a visitor centre and space for exhibitions, as well as the usual research facilities that most county archives provide. The team also maintain other collections in Bury St Edmunds and Lowestoft.

“The visitor centre helps us tell the county’s story from its founding to the present day,” Rebecca explains.

“We want to engage with everyone in the county: young and old; people who’ve been here for generations and new arrivals – including new arrivals from other countries.

“The archives tell us about the history, geography and economy of the county. It’s everything that roots us in where we are, and that’s an important story to tell.”

Suffolk Archives started working with Volunteer Makers in 2019, and they now close to 300 volunteers signed up to the platform.

“Even when volunteers aren’t active, the system helps us to get our messages out there and spread the word about what we are doing,” Rebecca notes.

“Traditionally, archives have a rather tight base of mainly older volunteers, but Volunteer Makers has diversified our appeal.

“We get lots of younger people looking to fulfil roles with us as a first step to employment, or to enhance their CVs.”

During Lockdown, volunteer engagement has needed some thought, but challenges are still made to those signed up. They can range from simply following on social media, to help with the collection of archive material.

Family challenges have seen the archive collect children’s stories of Lockdown, and challenging youngsters to make Lego representations of Suffolk landmarks. The archives have also worked with schools to tell the story of Suffolk’s WWII Polish community, a story that resonates with today’s children of Polish origin in the county.

“Volunteer Makers has been so helpful in widening our appeal, it’s such a handy tool,” enthuses Rebecca.

“From an administrative side as well, it has made keeping track of volunteers easier. Tickbox has just added a rota function which allows us to note who is doing what, where – without a mound of paper!”

How Gloucester put itself at the forefront of innovative community engagement

by Claire Sully

Getting the community engaged and involved in arts, heritage and culture, has long been an aim of civic bodies in Gloucester.

It’s an approach that both carries economic benefits, and individual ones: letting the city council support events and facilities, and promoting physical and mental wellbeing and social inclusion for residents.

The West Country city has been a successful adopter of a new engagement model and technology – Volunteer Makers – to aid these aims.

Gloucester Heritage Forum and other community groups established Engage in Gloucester a year ago, to pool ideas and resources and use the platform provided by Tickbox, a digital tech company based just down the road in Bristol. Tickbox’s vision is to build technology products that have a positive impact on the world, Volunteer Makers has been rolled out nationally – supported by Creative England and Arts Council England.

The results achieved by Engage in Gloucester, using Volunteer Makers, not only provided community and civic projects with more public participation, but brought younger supporters into the fold – a key ambition for the Council.

“Engage in Gloucester with Volunteer Makers has not only increased the number of volunteers, it has enabled a better engagement with the public and increased the scope of their involvement with community groups and projects,” says Sarah Orton, Gloucester Culture Trust’s Community Engagement and Volunteer Officer.

Engage in Gloucester’s Volunteer Makers platform has been used by nearly 60 groups based in or near the city, ranging from Gloucester City Museum and Archives, to a community gardening group and the Girl Guides.

Larger organisations often write their own volunteer “challenges” (opportunities) for supported participation, while Sarah co-ordinates and helps smaller groups write and manage theirs.

“It has tapped into the changing face of community engagement,” Sarah explains.

“People being able to offer a few hours here and there and dip into what they want to do and where they want to do it.

“We’ve seen a big increase in young volunteers. Sometimes students looking for experience, perhaps to put on their UCCA form or to gain a foothold in the heritage and charity sector; young people doing their Duke of Edinburgh Awards and others who just want to help out, maybe in a gap year.

“The technology suits them to the ground and helps them connect, though of course, we still have plenty of older users as well, including retired people.”

Micro-volunteering is what Volunteer Makers encourages, letting supporters match their skills and interests and give time as and when they can, to help charities achieve specific goals.

“We’ve seen people grow in confidence. One regular volunteer now has paid work in the sector.

“For all, it helps that the volunteer challenges mean it isn’t a case of ‘turn up and do what we ask you’ but supporters know what their role will be, they will understand what they’re doing – and are consequently more enthusiastic about it!”

Engage in Gloucester can list many notable successes: stewarding posts for the city carnival and other festivals are filled “almost instantly”, while data inputting roles at the city archives and local history festival, both in situ and as home-based work, have also proved very popular. A drop-in counselling service filled demanding ongoing receptionist roles thanks to Engage in Gloucester and Volunteer Makers. Environmental challenges have also “flown off the shelf”, as Sarah puts it.

“Flexibility is what makes it work for users – not everyone can give regular commitments, but many want to help out as-and-when.

“Our community groups say they are seeing a very high calibre of volunteer come forward. Volunteer Makers has really made a difference to how charity and community groups and events operate here. It’s been great!”

It’s just worked really well for us” Sarah concludes.

Engaging and Developing Supporters – 5 User Tips

by Claire Sully

At Volunteer Makers we’re always looking for ways to improve the success of our user community in engaging with volunteers and supporters, and to share success too.

Spoiler alert! Volunteer Makers requires the same sustained approach to supporter development as any other system. The difference Volunteer Makers can make is the potential of social digital and flexible opportunities to reach out and appeal to a wider and more diverse supporter base.

Here are our top tips, collated from our successful user community:
Tip 1
In at #1, social media – particularly effective for reaching new volunteers. Although it’s not rocket science, it’s surprising how easy it is to miss the opportunity of this tool to share Challenges, engage with supporters and share your supporter stories. Successful users are putting most, if not all, of their Challenges on social media and making the most of their reach. Remember, Volunteer Makers has social media sharing tools embedded in the site to make it even easier!

“Every new challenge that goes on is mentioned on all our social media feeds for us and the town. I would say that digital media has been the most successful marketing tool, particularly as we have quite a good reach already” (Tamsin Bough, Falmouth Art Gallery).

“I post at least one original tweet or post each day and then obviously we re-post relevant content. Primarily I use it in a “Have you seen this volunteering opportunity with X” type vein, but I also share events that are happening at the organisations that use Engage in Gloucester and celebrate local volunteers or volunteering in general” (Sarah Orton, Gloucester Culture Trust)

Tip 2
Your website – again, not rocket science, but do make sure your Volunteer Makers’ site is on there, is easy to find, and cross references support and volunteering. As your Volunteer Makers’ site is branded to look like your core website, this should be seamless.

“Our website has directed many people to sign up, having a section explaining about Volunteer Makers” (Jessica Hartshorn, Rugby Art Gallery and Museum)

Tip 3
To reach existing supporters and volunteers, and to convert them to being a Volunteer Maker, make the most of your mailing assets – to existing volunteers and supporters (all GDPR compliant of course!), direct emails (add a clickable banner to the footer of all staff emails) or newsletter articles.

Tip 4
There’s nothing wrong with analogue! Engage new supporters offline too. Posters, flyers, postcards and bookmarks have all been tried and tested, directing people to Volunteer Makers’ sites.

“I’ve got three pull up banners, logoed stickers and postcards to advertise the site. I go out to events such as the History Festival, residents’ weekend, local community shows and have a stall, chat to people about the site and hand out the postcards and stickers. I also made sure that the postcards are a bit thicker and substantial so they don’t just get immediately discarded and they also work as bookmarks” (Sarah Orton, Gloucester Culture Trust)

Tip 5
More offline activity – you can still showcase Volunteer Makers and drive people to your site via traditional methods such as volunteer fairs and events (on or offsite). It might help to have a laptop/tablet to showcase what you offer, how it works and encourage sign ups on the spot.

“I recommend face-to-face contact at open days – ensuring they sign up on the spot!” (Katy Hammond, Museum of Oxford)

“The most labour intensive, but I think the best conversion rate has to be face to face contact with people” (Sarah Orton, Gloucester Culture Trust)

Summary
We ask our users to put together a plan before they launch for delivering Volunteer Makers – but a plan isn’t just for launch! You will need to sustain your supporter development all year round, and be prepared to experiment with new approaches and maximise your existing assets. As you would for any audience engagement in your organisation.

Case Study
Sofia Carosi, Corporate, Community and Events Fundraiser at HorseWorld tells us how she’s put this into practice since launching in January this year:

I’ve found that social media, particularly Facebook, has been the best way to gain new members on HorseWorld Heroes (HH), as it reaches many more people and is an easy platform to get info in front of them more than once, as opposed to sending a letter where they read it then throw it away. I post regularly on social media about the new site and that we’re looking for specific challenges to be met etc. I’ve set the cover photos on all our social media accounts to show HH and pinned posts to the top of all news feeds. I also ran a sponsored Facebook Advert for 7 days (spent £50, 315 link clicks).

I’ve made staff add clickable banners to their emails so it reaches new audiences outside of my control (without breaching GDPR). I sent direct emails to all current staff and active volunteers and arranged reminders to be sent to those who have not opened the first mailing. I sent emails via MailChimp to active supporters with email consent.

I posted within a campaign mail out to supporters a printed bookmark (that I made myself and printed here to keep costs down) with details of the website on. HorseWorld Heroes will also have a page in the next HorseWorld newsletter and will be pushed out further at events with flyers and bookmarks in goody bags.

Popular challenges are mainly within the Just A Minute category, with Follow On Social Media topping this. An Hour or Two category challenges are also popular, with Knit/Crochet Horses or Donkeys being most clicked on and accepted. Because of this, we will have a lot more handmade horses/donkeys to sell at the open days (which from experience we know are very popular) so will increase our income as a result of the new Volunteer Makers system.

We have gained a new potential regular Research Volunteer to help with #BreakTheChain, and a new and regular Discovery Volunteer. Furthermore, we have acquired two offers of raffle prizes for the Open Days and one offer of clothing for Discovery students because of HorseWorld Heroes.

You can find their site here

Anna Bryant, MA, AMA, Marketing and Engagement Manager, Volunteer Makers
Anna has worked in and for museums of all shapes and sizes across curatorial, interpretation, audience development and marketing roles during the last 19 years.

Volunteer Makers ends the year with a bang – 1000s of people now signed up doing 10,000s of challenges, here are some shining examples

by Claire Sully

The approach to the Festive Season hasn’t slowed the pace of the Volunteer Makers’ team and our partner organisations. We now have thousands of people signed up to Volunteer Makers’ platforms across England and have engaged with organisations operating over 200 sites!

As we prepare to leave a busy and successful 2018 for Volunteer Makers, now’s the time to look at some of our “Christmas stars” who’ve upped their digital game via Volunteer Makers.

The Museum of Oxford is a pioneer organisation within Volunteer Makers, and despite being closed for redevelopment until 2020, has signed up more than 100 volunteers since the launch of their site in February.

That success was matched by Engage in Gloucester, a consortium of arts, heritage, cultural and community projects in the West Country city, who also added 100 new names to their volunteer platform. They launched their site in September, and have really engaged with Volunteer Makers’ ethos of using social media to build engagement and embed the organisation in their community.

Christmas hats off as well to trailblazing Tyne and Wear Museums – one of Volunteer Makers’ original pioneer partners – who have over 1,500 volunteers signed up at nine sites across the region via their site.

Finally, we must mention Essex-based community project Snapping the Stiletto, which in addition to garnering media interest, has also engaged 150 new volunteers since March. The project celebrates the lives and achievements of the women of Essex, and its success forms the launchpad for the Essex Women’s History Festival, in March 2019.

Although Volunteer Makers has proved a popular way to improve engagement with arts and heritage organisations, this is far from being the only sector the digital platform works with.

Carymoor Environmental Trust is a nature reserve and education centre developed on a landfill site in the heart of Somerset. The charity has just launched its Volunteer Makers’ site, looking to build its volunteering base and make supporting their mission fun via a series of challenges.

This month we also delivered a Volunteer Makers’ strategic training workshop to Horse World, a charity that supports rescue horses working with young people based in Bristol.

Further north, last month saw another new Volunteer Makers’ site launch. University of Liverpool Museums runs two sites – the Victoria Gallery and Museum and the Garstang Museum of Archaeology – both recognised as national centres of excellence. Volunteers speak of the sites as jewels of the city of Liverpool, and the Volunteer Makers’ platform will help the parent organisation garner new faces – and make the most of those already there!

As well as site launches, Volunteer Makers just ran a workshop in a city we are already familiar with via pioneers Heritage MK. This time it was with MK Gallery, who are looking to engage more supporters when their expanded site opens next year.

Anyone interested in finding out what a training workshop next year can do for your organisations’ engagement, please click here. We’d love to hear from you.

In 2019 Volunteer Makers will be further developing and rolling out its Sustainable Libraries programme – bringing the micro-volunteering and digital engagement message to this much cherished, but economically threatened, sector.

We are also in advanced talks with a region over a new strategic programme called Connecting Communities, Transforming Lives. Watch this space for news!

We wish all our partners, stakeholders, volunteers and staff a very happy Christmas holiday and look forward to working with you in 2019.

Launches at all Points East and West for Volunteer Makers in the Summer

by Claire Sully

The summer months were no holiday for the Volunteer Makers’ team, with demand for the blended volunteering model and tech still high and new organisations and groups signing up to our vision.

The warm weather saw the launch of two major heritage groups’ Volunteer Makers portals.

Colchester and Ipswich Museums operate at six fascinating sites in Suffolk and north Essex.

Ipswich Museum tells the story of this ancient town, and also has large galleries of exotic fauna, many collected in Victorian times, including one of the most comprehensive collection of British birds in the world.

Sharing the Victorian home with the museum, the town’s art gallery contains several notable works, including a number associated with the Suffolk-based Benton End Group, who were a major influence on 20^th Century British art. Beautiful Christchurch Mansion, which dates to Tudor times, is the group’s third attraction in Ipswich.

In Colchester, there is a Natural History Museum, based in a historic church, Hollytrees Museum, an old mansion with some fascinating facts about the town – including that it was where the nursery rhyme Twinkle Twinkle Little Star was written!

The group also administers Colchester Castle, a grand Norman edifice, containing the largest Keep in England.

Colchester and Ipswich Museums have been Arts Council England supported pioneers in the Volunteer Makers programme, and their new portal showcases a range of imaginative challenges to engage the public in volunteering and supporting their sites.

Turning westward, another multi-site heritage group launch. Eleven organisations in Gloucester have joined together to form the Engage In Gloucester volunteering group.

Members include Gloucester Cathedral; the city’s museums and archives; its Civic trust and History Festival, and the ruined abbey of Llanthony Secunda.

Also in the group is the National Waterways Museum, which tells the story of Britain’s canal network and its crucial role in the economic development of the country, from a dockside setting.

Like their eastern counterparts, the Gloucester group has been a pioneer body, supported by Arts Council England, to develop and refine Volunteer Makers through feedback and trialling, working with our developers Tickbox Marketing.

Engage In Gloucester has a wide array of volunteer challenges and opportunities on its portal, fully engaging with the Micro-Volunteering revolution.

Spreading the word on micro and blended volunteering was Programme Director Claire’s task, when she joined Pippa Smith, Project Manager of the acclaimed Snapping the Stiletto project, at the GEM conference in Nottingham.

Snapping the Stiletto aims to counter the negative clichés surrounding “Essex Girls” by highlighting the positive and inspirational stories of women in the county.

Based on a collaborative and co-production approach, and utilising the stories, research and hard-work of 130 volunteers, it has been a major success, and was recently featured on BBC News.

The broadcaster noted the stories of these remarkable women “are being told not by the museums but by the volunteers. It is led by the women of Essex themselves”.

Claire and Pippa told the Conference that getting wise with how volunteers were used is essential for the heritage sector in the 21^st Century.

But it isn’t just heritage organisations, that Volunteer Makers works with.

Recently, Claire carried out a training programme for the Cri du Chat Syndrome Support Group. Cri du Chat is a rare, but devastating genetic condition that affects 1 in 50,000 babies. Its Volunteer Makers portal will bring carers and other supporters together to raise money, and donate practical help.

Also outside the museum and gallery hub of Volunteer Makers groups is Carymoor Environmental Trust in Somerset.

The trust has worked to “green” and encourage wildlife back to 100 acres of capped landfill site near Castle Cary.

As well as conservation work, it is a major educational destination for school groups wanting to find out about nature, land use and sustainability. Volunteers are at the heart of Carymoor’s work. Volunteer Makers’ training with the Trust spread the word on the new, smart approach to managing volunteer time.

So, a busy summer – and lots more in the calendar – for Volunteer Makers.

Before You Launch – Consider These 5 Tips

by Claire Sully

Here at Volunteer Makers we are always looking for ways to improve the success of our pioneers in engaging with volunteers and supporters in flexible and inspiring ways. Here are our top tips to consider before launch.

Tip 1
Think strategically about why you want to use Volunteer Makers to engage with your supporters. Is it a way of opening up new opportunities to regular volunteers? Do you want to encourage new and different types of supporters to join you? Do you want to offer flexible opportunities? Do you want supporters to help deliver a business objective (e.g. a redevelopment)?
“Thinking about challenges including micro ones has completely made us rethink how we use volunteers. Before we were in a situation where we would recruit volunteers and think how we would use them. Now we look at the programme coming up and think about how to use volunteers on and off site. Fundamental shift for us” (Amanda, Corinium Museum)
The answers to this question will help shape your plan…

Tip 2
Devise and work to an action plan, including how to roll out Volunteer Makers and how to work together. Name people in the plan! Make it SMART.
“Claire helped us to set an action plan during the workshop with a vision and aims. This, so far, has enabled the project to move forward. [We have] regular group meetings looking at our progress and working with the team and our current volunteers to overcome any challenges. Our officers are setting challenges, front of house staff are selling Volunteer Makers, volunteers are currently testing it. Everyone plays a part” (Jess, Rugby Art Gallery and Museum)
This plan must embed working organisation-wide…

Tip 3
Engage leadership in championing Volunteer Makers as part of your strategic engagement objectives. Get buy in across the whole organisation. An organisation-wide engagement culture helps to mitigate changes in staff that can impact roll out. Work across the whole organisation (including volunteers) to provide inspiring, flexible challenges that help deliver the organisation’s business need, understanding that almost anything can be framed as volunteering, engagement or support of your organisation.
“Getting the whole organisation involved at all levels has been really important. Planning multiple opportunities for people to get involved and think about what aspects of Volunteer Makers might appeal to the motivations of different teams” (Fran, Geffrye Museum of the Home)
And for this to happen you need to set aside time…

Tip 4
Make sure you commit the time, and are supported to do that, to make rolling out and developing Volunteer Makers a success. Although Volunteer Makers doesn’t replace your approach or existing volunteer programmes, you do need time to make it as effective as possible in engaging your audience.
“We have tried to work collaboratively across the organisation; in practical terms this has meant having a clear idea of time scale and key outcomes at different stages [which] has been really vital. This has helped to make sure that people have the information they need to contribute to decisions, reflect and feedback at each stage, whilst planning time to act on feedback where possible. We used a simple table to help keep track of this which allowed us to adjust the plan as needed” (Fran, Geffrye Museum of the Home)
And effective engagement means engaging digitally too…

Tip 5
How you are going to communicate your challenges is as important as coming up with them in the first place. Ensuring those responsible for marketing/social media are part of your organisation-wide buy in is essential. Engaging digitally is key, and you need to be social (e.g. a blog, social media) if you are going to diversify your volunteers and reach a broader range of people.

Anna Bryant, MA, AMA, Marketing and Engagement Manager, Volunteer Makers
Anna has worked in and for museums of all shapes and sizes across curatorial, interpretation, audience development and marketing roles during the last 18 years.

What Makes a Good Challenge Great?

by Claire Sully

Here’s something to ponder – what makes some Volunteer Makers’ challenges stand out from the crowd, while others fade away? Why do some pull you in while others have the opposite effect? In an attempt to answer that question, I’ve been delving into our pioneers’ platforms and have distilled my answer into 5 top tips.

Tip 1
Be humorous, and if you can’t be humorous give your challenge some personality – Volunteer Makers doesn’t need to be too formal, taking as it does its cues from social digital – where people come together on digital platforms. This translates well to engaging on social media, which is where you need to be talking about your opportunities to diversify your volunteers.
Tip 2
Give a compelling or inspiring reason to get involved. Why should they do this challenge? It might be because it helps deliver your cause – one they can get behind. Or it could be access to ‘behind the scenes’ opportunities.
Tip 3
Be specific in what you are asking people to do and ensure it’s appropriate for the time category. If people are looking for an hour or two, then let them see it can be done!
Tip 4
Appeal to a broad range of skills and interests in your challenges by thinking laterally. This too will help to diversify your volunteers and engage more people.
Tip 5
Make the whole experience frictionless for your volunteers. You’ve led them this far, don’t fall at the last hurdle by adding extra layers. Volunteer Makers captures your volunteer data and preferences on sign up, so get them to sign up/sign in, be clear about what will happen next and let them get on with completing the challenge!

Summary
So how does this look in practice?

http://museumofoxford.volunteermakers.org/get-involved/hour-or-two/spread-the-word/7/
• This challenge uses humour (‘help us change this sorry state of affairs!’)
• It gives a good reason to get involved (‘the more people we have attending our events and visiting, the better reason to develop the museum’)
• It’s specific and would fit in the one-two hours slot (‘Drop off 20 leaflets with a local café, take 10 to your local library or give a leaflet to a friend!’)
• There’s no friction to getting involved (‘Sign up here, get an email from the Museum Team and simply arrange a time to pick up some leaflets. We will discuss with you where you intend to distribute them so there aren’t any wasted journeys.’)

http://southamptonartsandheritage.volunteermakers.org/get-involved/hour-or-two/clock-tower-tour-assistant/11/
• This challenge is specific and timebound (‘The tours last an hour, start at reception and run at 10:30 and 11:30am. You’ll be required to climb 215 steps for each tour and to help ensure that the group stays together’).
• It’s intriguing (‘get a behind the scenes look at one of Southampton’s most iconic buildings’).
• It has some lateral thinking in the Skills and Interests that could appeal to a broad range of people (e.g. Conservation, Event Stewarding, Architecture and Building Management, Visitor Services)

http://snappingthestiletto.volunteermakers.org/get-involved/give-a-day/uncover-katherine-mina-courtauldas-involvement-in-the-suffragette-movement/38/
• This challenge is specific (‘Uncover Katherine Mina Courtauld’s involvement in the Suffragette Movement’)
• It’s inspiring (they’ve provided enough history to motivate you)
• There’s no friction to getting involved (Sign in/sign up, accept the challenge and ‘Visit the Essex Record Office to search for information and email Claire Willetts at Braintree Museum with anything that you uncover’)

Have you seen or created any challenges that are great, not just good? If so, share them with @volunteermakers

Anna Bryant, MA, AMA, Marketing and Engagement Manager, Volunteer Makers
Anna has worked in and for museums of all shapes and sizes across curatorial, interpretation, audience development and marketing roles during the last 18 years.

Meetings – and the Mersey: Volunteer Makers summer schedule

by Claire Sully

Hot sun was matched by hot demand for Volunteer Makers blend of micro-volunteering and digital engagement.

Love Falmouth Volunteer Makers have been spreading the word at Cornwall’s Brilliant Things conference.

Tamsin Bough and Sarah Scot, of Falmouth Art Gallery, spoke to the meeting on growing relationships with volunteers.

The conference – organised by the Cornish Museum Partnership – heard how Love Falmouth Volunteers (a partnership of cultural organisations led by Falmouth Art Gallery) use of the Volunteer Makers platform has not only brought new supporters to its members, but strengthened institutions’ links with the local community.

Early July saw a regular event in the VM calendar: attendance at the South West Fed’s annual conference in Exeter.

Volunteer Makers were among the sponsors of the event and had a trade stand at it. VM founder Claire Sully also gave a presentation on the VM concept to delegates.

South Wed Fed is a community of independent heritage organisations throughout South West England.

Claire Sully said: “Volunteer Makers, as an Arts Council England supported programme, first got lift off at the South West Fed Conference 2015 after a networking chat.

“We’re now working with over 70 organisations and love returning to where it all began, starting new conversations to see where they might take us next.”

One place they took Claire was from the south-west to the north-west, with a visit to Liverpool for the latest in Volunteer Makers’ rolling programme of training workshops.

Volunteer Makers worked with University of Liverpool Museums & Galleries to spread the word on how its digital and blended volunteering approach can manage, evaluate and enhance working with volunteers and supporters.

The group includes a quirky museum and well-regarded gallery in the Victoria Building – an architectural icon in itself, as well as a world-class museum of archaeology at Garstang.