The Secret Museum Director shares the joys, pitfalls and awkward truths of working with volunteers in this honest look at life behind the scenes.
I love working with volunteers. People who give up their time purely for reasons of passion, a desire to help, or as a personal or professional challenge. It is my earnest wish that as I get older, I would like to work less and volunteer more.
Within museums, volunteering is crucial. Most museums are actively recruiting volunteers constantly, to ensure their pool meets the needs of that organisation. This means an entire infrastructure is required with organisation and forward planning. Larger sites will usually have volunteer managers and the like to enable this to function properly.
The Good
When this works, the pool of volunteers display the following: a passion for the subject matter, a willingness to do what needs to be done (be it touring, maintenance etc), and an attitude and flexibility which works for the museum without causing difficulties for the volunteer.
I have been so lucky with my volunteers over the years, I have been amazed by the passion they have shown and the willingness they have displayed to undertake tasks. My favourite example is when a volunteer quite literally wrote some of our text panels (perfectly I might add) when our outside consultancy failed to deliver.
The Bad
Those of us employed in this sector must be aware, however, that museums have been known to ‘take the mickey’ in the past, sometimes brazenly holding back on recruitment under the assumption that the slack could be taken up by free labour. I remember an example in which an event we had arranged was entirely staffed by volunteers, with only one single paid employee supervising it. Needless to say, both visitors and volunteers were not happy when the organisation of the event suffered.
The Ugly
Volunteers are a brilliant source of honesty and a great gauge of the reality of your museum. But they can be honest, boy can they be honest… I saw a volunteer tell the former director of a large national that they were a chocolate teapot…to their face! I have also experienced and had to manage situations in which volunteers have made political statements to visitors, made flirtatious remarks, even screamed at one visitor for wandering off slightly during a tour.
"I saw a volunteer tell the former director of a large national that they were a chocolate teapot…to their face!
Volunteers I have worked with in the past have opposed museum vetting and reference gathering policies; one person who wanted to volunteer with us declined to give me their real name.
It also isn’t easy overseeing the rota! Dealing with holidays and leave which might well be commonplace, especially if your volunteers are older or working elsewhere. Finally, demographically, we all want a diversity in our volunteers, and yet we all find ourselves with a similar demographic who come forward. Trying to ensure our volunteers reflect our visitors is no easy task and warrants an article all by itself.
Managing museum volunteers
We need to use our volunteers to supplement and enhance our operations (particularly regarding visitor experience), not to simply save money. Volunteers also often feel out of the loop and there is a tendency for museums to first, if not only, address paid staff with important news, changes etc.. Rightly, volunteers want to feel included in all aspects of museum life that impacts them.
Volunteering policy, strategy, recruitment and operations are crucial for our sector, and the above, I hope, provides a small glimpse into the world in which we find ourselves.
