Open Forum

Original Message------

Hello AAM community, 

I am working with a museum that is rethinking their volunteer program model. The current program focuses on training docents to give groups guided tours. They would like to expand the program to provide more volunteer roles and attract a more diverse set of volunteers. To help this process, the would love to learn from other museums who have healthy, multi-role volunteer programs that serve the needs of the entire institution, while representing the diverse communities they serve. 

If you/your organization has any lessons to share about how you operate a similar program or facilitated a similar expansion/shift, please respond to any of the questions below or let me know if you would be open a brief phone conversation to share best/next practices. 

1. What is the staff (dedicated to volunteer management) to volunteer ratio at your museum? ( # of paid vol. management staff/# of volunteers ratio?)
   
2. Is time for managing or training volunteers integrated into the job descriptions of other museum staff that utilize or benefit from volunteer support? (e.g.; curators doing gallery trainings, membership overseeing database entry work, groundskeepers overseeing gardening crews, etc.)
   
3. Can you share key advice/lessons learned related to the process of facilitating change of an existing, legacy volunteer or docent program? 
   
4. Which strategies have been most successful for recruiting a team of volunteers that is diverse in age, race, background, and abilities that better reflects the community you serve?
   

We have been digging through past posts here, AAM session archives, and AAMV best practices for related information, but please don't hesitate to offer your ideas or resources, even if they seem obvious. Thanks so much for sharing your time and insights!

Best, 

Kyrie

Kyrie Kellett, MA CIP 

Principal 

Mason Bee LLC

503.419.7735      

masonbeellc.com

Imagine, fund, and create transformative learning experiences.

I look forward to reading responses. Which strategies have been most successful for recruiting a team of volunteers that is diverse in age, race, background, and abilities that better reflects the community we serve is an ongoing challenge for us at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens. I just conducted a continuing education session with our Volunteers to discuss diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. We framed it as the beginning of reflective practice and working towards empathetic practice. I am hoping to engage our volunteers to assist in the diversification of our group. We used the article   Confronting Our Whiteness: Our First Steps Towards Systemic Change

Medium		remove preview
Confronting Our Whiteness: Our First Steps Towards Systemic Change Stacey Mann, learning experience designer and interpretive strategist, Saralyn Rosenfield, Director of Learning & Engagement, Delaware Art Museum, and Amelia Wiggins, Manager of Gallery Learning & Interpretation, Delaware Art Museum Building institutional empathy can strengthen inclusive practice, address racial bias, and dismantle a museum's history of being dominated by White perspectives while excluding people of color (English, 2015; Halperin, 2018; Kennedy, 2015; Kinsley & Whitman, 2016). View this on Medium >

 
This served as a very useful starting point to get conversations going and thinking about next steps to take.

Mark

------------------------------
Mark Osterman, Ed.D.
Adult Learning and Engagement Manager
Vizcaya Museum and Gardens
Miami, FL 33141
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 10-09-2018 09:54 AM
From: Herbert Jones
Subject: Any advice for a museum looking to expand their volunteer program?

Hello Kyrie,

 

Perhaps the website of the American Association for Museum Volunteers (AAMV) can be helpful to you. We're an affiliate group to AAM and host sessions each year relating to various aspects of beginning and maintain vibrant volunteer groups within museums. Many/most of the group members are managers of our museums' volunteer programs so we're all pretty invested in the work and have a LOT of experiences which would be relevant to your situation.

 

The contact information for the board members is on the website in case you have deeper questions not addressed there. I'm sure any/all of us would be happy to chat with you.  

 

--

 

Herbert S. Jones
Volunteer & Intern Programs Manager
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
hjones@mfa.org | 617.369.3040

http://www.mfa.org

 

Original Message------

Hello AAM community, 

I am working with a museum that is rethinking their volunteer program model. The current program focuses on training docents to give groups guided tours. They would like to expand the program to provide more volunteer roles and attract a more diverse set of volunteers. To help this process, the would love to learn from other museums who have healthy, multi-role volunteer programs that serve the needs of the entire institution, while representing the diverse communities they serve. 

If you/your organization has any lessons to share about how you operate a similar program or facilitated a similar expansion/shift, please respond to any of the questions below or let me know if you would be open a brief phone conversation to share best/next practices. 

1. What is the staff (dedicated to volunteer management) to volunteer ratio at your museum? ( # of paid vol. management staff/# of volunteers ratio?)
   
2. Is time for managing or training volunteers integrated into the job descriptions of other museum staff that utilize or benefit from volunteer support? (e.g.; curators doing gallery trainings, membership overseeing database entry work, groundskeepers overseeing gardening crews, etc.)
   
3. Can you share key advice/lessons learned related to the process of facilitating change of an existing, legacy volunteer or docent program? 
   
4. Which strategies have been most successful for recruiting a team of volunteers that is diverse in age, race, background, and abilities that better reflects the community you serve?
   

We have been digging through past posts here, AAM session archives, and AAMV best practices for related information, but please don't hesitate to offer your ideas or resources, even if they seem obvious. Thanks so much for sharing your time and insights!

Best, 

Kyrie

Kyrie Kellett, MA CIP 

Principal 

Mason Bee LLC

503.419.7735      

masonbeellc.com

Imagine, fund, and create transformative learning experiences.

Thanks, Mark! I really appreciate you sharing your experience at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens and the wonderful article about the experiences at the Delaware Art Museum. I appreciate how you and the folks at the Delaware Art Museum focus on how the museum must first reflect on their larger connection to Whiteness, empathy for their communities, and "improving their institutional body language" before any meaningful change can happen. The museum we are working with has done a beautiful job of addressing these issues and focusing on social justice, relevance, and collaboration in their exhibitions and education efforts, but is now thinking about how that work translates to volunteer programs. 

Are there other museums out there who have been specifically working towards diversifying their volunteer programs in support of their larger equity and empathetic practice goals? If so, what has worked for you? 

Kyrie

------------------------------
Kyrie Kellett
Founding Principal
Portland
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 10-09-2018 02:00 PM
From: Mark Osterman
Subject: Any advice for a museum looking to expand their volunteer program?

I look forward to reading responses. Which strategies have been most successful for recruiting a team of volunteers that is diverse in age, race, background, and abilities that better reflects the community we serve is an ongoing challenge for us at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens. I just conducted a continuing education session with our Volunteers to discuss diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. We framed it as the beginning of reflective practice and working towards empathetic practice. I am hoping to engage our volunteers to assist in the diversification of our group. We used the article   Confronting Our Whiteness: Our First Steps Towards Systemic Change

Medium		remove preview
Confronting Our Whiteness: Our First Steps Towards Systemic Change Stacey Mann, learning experience designer and interpretive strategist, Saralyn Rosenfield, Director of Learning & Engagement, Delaware Art Museum, and Amelia Wiggins, Manager of Gallery Learning & Interpretation, Delaware Art Museum Building institutional empathy can strengthen inclusive practice, address racial bias, and dismantle a museum's history of being dominated by White perspectives while excluding people of color (English, 2015; Halperin, 2018; Kennedy, 2015; Kinsley & Whitman, 2016). View this on Medium >

This served as a very useful starting point to get conversations going and thinking about next steps to take.

Mark

------------------------------
Mark Osterman, Ed.D.
Adult Learning and Engagement Manager
Vizcaya Museum and Gardens
Miami, FL 33141

Original Message:
Sent: 10-09-2018 09:54 AM
From: Herbert Jones
Subject: Any advice for a museum looking to expand their volunteer program?

Hello Kyrie,

 

Perhaps the website of the American Association for Museum Volunteers (AAMV) can be helpful to you. We're an affiliate group to AAM and host sessions each year relating to various aspects of beginning and maintain vibrant volunteer groups within museums. Many/most of the group members are managers of our museums' volunteer programs so we're all pretty invested in the work and have a LOT of experiences which would be relevant to your situation.

 

The contact information for the board members is on the website in case you have deeper questions not addressed there. I'm sure any/all of us would be happy to chat with you.  

 

--

 

Herbert S. Jones
Volunteer & Intern Programs Manager
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
hjones@mfa.org | 617.369.3040

http://www.mfa.org

 

Original Message------

Hello AAM community, 

I am working with a museum that is rethinking their volunteer program model. The current program focuses on training docents to give groups guided tours. They would like to expand the program to provide more volunteer roles and attract a more diverse set of volunteers. To help this process, the would love to learn from other museums who have healthy, multi-role volunteer programs that serve the needs of the entire institution, while representing the diverse communities they serve. 

If you/your organization has any lessons to share about how you operate a similar program or facilitated a similar expansion/shift, please respond to any of the questions below or let me know if you would be open a brief phone conversation to share best/next practices. 

1. What is the staff (dedicated to volunteer management) to volunteer ratio at your museum? ( # of paid vol. management staff/# of volunteers ratio?)
   
2. Is time for managing or training volunteers integrated into the job descriptions of other museum staff that utilize or benefit from volunteer support? (e.g.; curators doing gallery trainings, membership overseeing database entry work, groundskeepers overseeing gardening crews, etc.)
   
3. Can you share key advice/lessons learned related to the process of facilitating change of an existing, legacy volunteer or docent program? 
   
4. Which strategies have been most successful for recruiting a team of volunteers that is diverse in age, race, background, and abilities that better reflects the community you serve?
   

We have been digging through past posts here, AAM session archives, and AAMV best practices for related information, but please don't hesitate to offer your ideas or resources, even if they seem obvious. Thanks so much for sharing your time and insights!

Best, 

Kyrie

Kyrie Kellett, MA CIP 

Principal 

Mason Bee LLC

503.419.7735      

masonbeellc.com

Imagine, fund, and create transformative learning experiences.

Hello! I just presented at the AASLH conference with my Executive Director and External Relations Manager. 
I'd love to discuss this over the phone - email me and we'll set something up. 

Filoli has approximately 650 current volunteers, one full-time Volunteer Services Coordinator (myself) and a part-time VolServ Assistant. We had a legacy of more than 1000 self-directed volunteers, but now we have re-engaged our volunteer corps to work under the direction of staff.
Managers of other departments supply content-knowledge, oversight, and increasingly, more volunteer management directly. 

Our strategic plan for the next 5 years (complete in a month) has Diversity and Inclusion as one of the cross-threads which weaves through each of our three main goals. We've made strides in this area in the last two years, and again, I'd be happy to speak to anyone who is trying to integrate new procedures or tactics, or overhauling systems in general. I can share some of our documents and how I approach assessing, re-engaging, re-directing and occasionally releasing our current volunteers.

------------------------------
Paula Allen
Volunteer Coordinator
Filoli Center
Woodside, CA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 10-08-2018 06:56 PM
From: Kyrie Kellett
Subject: Any advice for a museum looking to expand their volunteer program?

Hello AAM community, 

I am working with a museum that is rethinking their volunteer program model. The current program focuses on training docents to give groups guided tours. They would like to expand the program to provide more volunteer roles and attract a more diverse set of volunteers. To help this process, the would love to learn from other museums who have healthy, multi-role volunteer programs that serve the needs of the entire institution, while representing the diverse communities they serve. 

If you/your organization has any lessons to share about how you operate a similar program or facilitated a similar expansion/shift, please respond to any of the questions below or let me know if you would be open a brief phone conversation to share best/next practices. 

1. What is the staff (dedicated to volunteer management) to volunteer ratio at your museum? ( # of paid vol. management staff/# of volunteers ratio?)
   
2. Is time for managing or training volunteers integrated into the job descriptions of other museum staff that utilize or benefit from volunteer support? (e.g.; curators doing gallery trainings, membership overseeing database entry work, groundskeepers overseeing gardening crews, etc.)
   
3. Can you share key advice/lessons learned related to the process of facilitating change of an existing, legacy volunteer or docent program? 
   
4. Which strategies have been most successful for recruiting a team of volunteers that is diverse in age, race, background, and abilities that better reflects the community you serve?
   

We have been digging through past posts here, AAM session archives, and AAMV best practices for related information, but please don't hesitate to offer your ideas or resources, even if they seem obvious. Thanks so much for sharing your time and insights!

Best, 

Kyrie

Kyrie Kellett, MA CIP 

Principal 

Mason Bee LLC

503.419.7735      

masonbeellc.com

Imagine, fund, and create transformative learning experiences.