Volunteer-only heritage projects

As Finance Director & trustee of a volunteer-only HRP - the Yorkshire Wolds Railway in East Yorkshire - it would be interesting to hear of others' experiences regarding administrative work. It is relatively easy to get volunteers to do site work & operate trains, but very difficult to engage them in the background 'unsexy' stuff like paperwork.

Whilst we are expanding at a rate of knots & becoming a popular local attraction, we are also clearly a fledgling railway & do not have the financial resource to employ anyone or contract anyone in to do those admin tasks that no-one wants to do.

We are coping so far, with myself & a handful of others carrying most of the weight with our SMS, legal, book-keeping & 'membership secretary' roles, but I can see this becoming too onerous within the nest few years. We currently have over 400 members & around 70 active volunteers.

I don't think there's a direct answer to this problem. We've done some serious strategic thinking with regard to pricing & hopefully increasing footfall, which I believe will give us some scope for paying for some contracting-out in due course, but we're not there yet.

Have any others got any experiences they can share? For example, what SMS & databases do other smaller outfits use & do they reduce the burden? Are there any specialist 'bureaus' out there?

Thank you.

 

I'm in the position of doing some of that unsexy work in the church context - a lot of it around money, but also reaching into policy areas like safeguarding which carry risk with responsibility.

We're lucky in having volunteers who can help, but the ones with the skills and knowledge required are in short supply - as is their time. As a church, we use a specific church management tool (basically a CRM database customised for church use), and that takes a lot of the burden of record keeping and management. But we also pay an administrator because, frankly, we couldn't cope without someone in that role.

As you grow, I suspect that you may have to bite the bullet of paying for some of these services, but I'd also look hard at where there are tools in existence (HOPS is obviously the main one in the heritage railway market) that might support many of these functions.

 

I looked into doing a bit of my professional skill for our rugby club (lawyer), it gets very iffy very quickly...

It's a very tricky circle to square. All these safeguards are there for a reason, but they make voluntary work difficult in a time when people have less time to volunteer.
...and then you go on a safeguarding course and find out why...

 

Perhaps look for new volunteers through different channels, to attract people who aren't railway enthusiasts. There will hopefully be volunteering agencies in your area who would advertise roles for you on their websites. Also, list the opportunities on your website - our social enterprise gets most of our new volunteers that way.

Have you also tried posting on the positions on local community Facebook groups?

 

I'm involved in some "unsexy" roles at my railway as a volunteer, and I am not alone in that. So it is possible, though I wouldn't assume it is easy.

Having clear job / role descriptions, and advertising them, is important as others have noticed. I think the days of just "turn up and volunteer" are largely gone; you need a clear view of all the roles you need to cover, and then make sure that you have people to cover them all. In a small organisation some people will cover multiple roles of course, but I think it is still worth thinking about the roles you need.

You also probably have to realise that in some cases you may need to offer / fund training in some areas, even to volunteers. For example, if you have a safety-critical operational role (say driver, fireman, guard etc) then you need a competence framework ("what do I need to do to perform that role?"); a training scheme ("how do I learn the things I need to know?") and an assessment framework ("who is qualified to to say I am competent?") That last role probably needs to be performed by someone with a formal assessor qualification - so even if they are a volunteer, you may find you need to fund some volunteers to take that qualification.

Tom