The research, commissioned by Museums Galleries Scotland not only looked at the role and impact of volunteers in museums and galleries but also the impacts of volunteering on workforce development, the volunteers themselves and on communities. The report also gained a useful insight into the profile of volunteers within museums and galleries and their management practices.
Some key findings from the report are:
• 90% of respondent museums have volunteer staff and nearly a quarter are entirely run by volunteers
• Volunteers significantly increase the organisation’s capacity.
• The greatest benefit of volunteering for volunteers is a sense of achieving something useful. This is of particular importance for older volunteers.
Joanne Orr, CEO of Museums Galleries Scotland, said:
“We know that volunteers play a key part in the delivery of services in the museums sector and this latest research has provided us with robust evidence of how this essential workforce impacts on the sector and on the communities where the museums and galleries are located.
Museums Galleries Scotland are now looking at how we take these findings forward and the results will assist us in tailoring existing and proposed work to allow us to continue to support the development of volunteering within the sector.”
The methodology behind the Volunteering in Museums report comprised of two elements. A scoping survey of the Museums Galleries Scotland membership attracted a very high response rate which provided an excellent geographical representation within the responses. Data was also gathered at workshops with eight museums who were deliberately chosen to be as representative as possible of Museums Galleries Scotland’s member types.