Recruit volunteers

Face-to-face meetings are a key way that you can build relationships with marginalised groups and diversify your volunteer programme. Face-to-face meetings may be conducted online via a video conferencing platform like Zoom, or in-person.

If you’re keen to reach out to marginalised groups, but not sure where to start, you could try contacting organisations in your area that already serve these audiences to have a chat about if and how you could partner up. These organisations may offer to advise you on how to tailor your volunteer roles to their service users and/or circulate your opportunities to them.

Remember that partnerships should be mutually beneficial and that you have benefits to offer their audiences and members – engagement with culture and heritage has been shown to increase people’s wellbeing, volunteering is a great way to meet people and decrease isolation and volunteering can help folks build their CV. 

These organisations may also offer to set up an informal chat with their audiences. This is a great way for you to give a warm welcome to potential volunteers and have an opportunity to answer any questions or ease any anxieties that people may have about heritage volunteering.

In our increasingly digital age, print media such as posters and flyers can be overlooked and seen as outdated. However, print media remains an effective way to reach audiences that aren’t online, such as older people, those without access to Internet or digital devices and those who experience barriers in using technology. 

You can use Canva’s free templates to create flyers and posters to advertise your opportunities. If you’d like to use Make Your Mark’s logo or branding on your flyers and posters, we’ve included our brand toolkit below.