This is a ‘how to recruit, train, manage and support volunteers’ guide produced as part of the Digital Skills for Heritage’s Digital Volunteering programme.

1. Project background

Heritage Trust Network is a membership organisation full of people who have delivered amazing heritage projects against all the odds and our mission is to help others do the same.

We asked all our members to submit a digital dilemma they were having in their heritage project for us to recruit a ‘Digital Hero’ to help them with. A ‘digital hero’ is a volunteer with digital skills and either with limited or no previous work experience within the heritage sector, who is able to volunteer mostly remotely and in person if they wish. Volunteers can help with social media, updating websites or get involved in digital archives. All our members are working on saving heritage buildings or sites for community/ social use.

 Stakeholders involved in the project:

• Digital Hero Project Manager – a new role was recruited within Heritage Trust Network
• The Audience Agency – provided digital support, which included running our training events for the Digital Heroes and offering them ongoing digital support throughout the project.
• Lara Ratnaraja Consultancy – provided training on inclusivity and how to be fully inclusive on your digital platforms.
• EMBED Equality Consultants – ran a session on Diversity and Inclusion for the Digital Heroes
• Beatfreeks – were involved in the first half of the project to help with recruitment of Digital Heroes.

2. Recruitment

We targeted 18-30-year-old volunteers as research suggested young people in this age category are not well represented in heritage sites in both work and volunteering. We targeted volunteers who wanted to develop skills and/or experience within the sector.

For the first cohort, we partnered with Beatfreeks, who is an insight-led engagement agency specialising in scaling relevance with young and diverse audiences. We recruited them as they seemed relevant and fit for the job to recruit young people to design material to use to recruit our volunteers. This was not overly successful as although we managed to recruit enough volunteers, however this created challenges, primarily because the Digital Heroes were not known to HTN and they required high levels of support to maintain engagement. For the second cohort, we recruited the volunteers ourselves through social media, using our members and an open callout. The most successful way we found to recruit the Digital Heroes was emailing lecturers at relevant university courses to get them to share it with their students.

3. Volunteer support

We trained our volunteers through six weekly training sessions which were two hours long on Zoom. Then volunteers could request time with the Digital Hero Project Manager or the Digital Skills Manager at The Audience Agency to help with any specific help they needed, throughout the project. If they needed help with how to do something digitally or which software they wanted to use, they contacted Digital Skills Manager at The Audience Agency. If they had a general or project management question they could contact the Digital Hero Project Manager.

Volunteers contacted us via email or the Facebook group we created for all the Digital Heroes. We created this group to allow volunteers to help each other and build a network with each other. It also allowed us to share files and documents with the heroes.

4. Digital technology and tools

5. Project stages

1. Staff recruitment
Recruitment of Project Officer for Digital Hero Project

2. Digital Volunteer Recruitment and Training Cohort 1
We recruited Beatfreeks to help with young people recruitment in the 1^st We worked with them to try and recruit as many volunteers as they could. For the training we worked with the Digital Skills Manager at The Audience Agency to curate 6 online (via Zoom) training sessions. We asked the Digital Heroes what was relevant to them to learn and from here we created this sessions.

3. Matching the volunteers with the hosts
We did this based on skills of the heroes to assist the hosts and considering geography in-case they wish to visit. We are a UK wide organisation so didn’t want anyone to be too far away, however we did cover travel expenses if needed.

4. Digital Volunteer management
The Digital Hero project officer from Heritage Trust Network managed this throughout Cohort 1 and communicated via email and the Facebook group. We also used Google drive to share documents with the heroes.

5. Evaluation of cohort 1
After the first cohort, we evaluated how it worked for us and our partners and made any changes we felt would improve the project. We also asked the Digital Heroes volunteers and the host members for their opinions and feedback from the first cohort in order to improve the second cohort.

6. Digital Volunteer Recruitment and Training cohort 2
For the second cohort, we recruited the volunteers ourselves via universities, member contacts and any contacts we had with organisations that work with people aged 18-30. This seemed to work better for us as we had more volunteers sign up and stay committed throughout the project. We ran the 6 training sessions again with The Audience Agency with some small amendments which came from the feedback such as recording the sessions for the heroes to look back on.

7. Matching the volunteers with the hosts
We did this based on skills of the heroes to assist the hosts and considering geography in-case they wish to visit. We are a UK wide organisation so didn’t want anyone to be too far away, however we did cover travel expenses if needed. We had some host organisations apply from Northern Ireland this cohort, however we did not have any heroes from NI so we did need to match some with just the skills taking into account, not the geography.

8. Digital Volunteer management
The Digital Hero project officer from Heritage Trust Network managed this throughout Cohort 1 and communicated via email and the Facebook group. For the second cohort we decided not to use google drive as it was another site that the heroes had to check. Instead we just used the Facebook group and for any larger files we uploaded to WeTransfer and shared the link on the Facebook group and via email.

9. Evaluation of cohort 2
Again, we evaluated how it worked for us and our partners and noted any changes we felt would improve the project if we were to run it again. We also asked the Digital Heroes volunteers and the host members for their opinions and feedback as they are integral to shaping the project for the future.

6. Key learnings

Work in partnership

Work with partner organisations or existing stakeholders (such as universities) who already have access and credibility with young people networks, rather than pitch an opportunity into a marketplace where you have no previous engagement. This will allow you to access people who are interested in heritage but not currently involved.

Volunteer requirements and guidelines

Set clear guidelines and requirements for your volunteers from the very beginning to ensure they know what they are signing up for, such as the requirement of giving the host organisation 40 hours of their time and how to let them know if anything changes regarding their commitments. Ensure you match the skills the volunteer has with the most relevant project to make it the most positive and successful experience it can be.

Make time to build relationships with volunteers

As this project is volunteer management via online only, it is so important to build genuine relationships with the volunteers so they come to you with any issues. This will allow the heroes to come to you with any issues or questions rather than feeling they have no one to ask or go silent.

7. Key challenges

Allow for volunteer dropouts

Volunteers will drop out at any stage of the project, you need to plan for this. After learning this in the first cohort, we had spare digital heroes recruited to replace any of those who dropped out in the second cohort. It is important to keep them engaged the whole way through in-case you need them towards the end of the project.

Communication

Allow yourself to be more flexible with your communication methods if you’re seeking to engage 18-30 year olds . Email proved effective for our project in most cases however if we had Whatsapp and phone numbers it would have provided us with a back-up method of communication.

Expectations of volunteers

If you are an organisation with limited experience and understanding of digital engagement, you should learn from digitally literate volunteers who can explain what scale and complexity of task is achievable within in a volunteering position. You must ensure your expectations of digital volunteering are based on the insights of experts and not your unrealistic expectations

Useful links

• How the Heritage Trust Network is bringing the sector together to learn and develop (article)
• Skills Platform’s Charity Digital Skills Report 2021 (pdf)
• Experiencing the Digital World: The Cultural Value of Digital Engagement with Heritage (article)

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Except where noted and excluding company and organisation logos this work is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) Licence

Please attribute as: "Recruit and manage young people to volunteer for your heritage organisation online (2023) by Heritage Trust Network   supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, licensed under CC BY 4.0