Recruit volunteers

We encourage you to promote volunteer opportunities as widely as possible.

We’d suggest advertising your opportunities in a few different ways: online, face-to-face and in print.

Advertising in different formats and locations can expand the number and diversity of the volunteers that apply for your opportunities.

Please note that to use the below resources, your organisation must be a member of Make Your Mark. Joining the campaign is free and easy – all you need to do is fill out a short online form!

Online

Advertising your opportunities online can enable you to reach a wide range of people. There are a few ways you could promote your opportunities online:

  • Your website: Post volunteer opportunities on your website's news or vacancies pages to flag new opportunities to people already interested in your organisation, such as visitors, members, researchers and heritage enthusiasts. To reach beyond heritage audiences, be sure to emphasise transferable skills and the social benefits of volunteering.
  • Your e-newsletter: Include volunteer opportunities in regular e-newsletters to engage existing supporters. These audiences already value your work, so they're more likely to want to get involved, especially if you highlight how volunteering helps preserve local history, historic buildings, natural heritage sites, collections and more.
  • Partner e-newsletters: Share your opportunities through partner organisations such as local museums, archives, historical societies, zoos, nature reserves, libraries and community heritage groups. To reach non-heritage groups, connect with partners outside the sector, such as community centres, youth organisations, employability programmes, colleges and universities and equalities organisations.
  • Social media: Use platforms like Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn to showcase your opportunities. To attract new audiences, be creative with your content, such as by sharing "day in the life" videos from existing volunteers, blogs from a diverse range of volunteers and more.
  • Third Sector Interfaces (TSIs): Promote your opportunities through your local TSI or volunteer centre, which often advertise roles on behalf of charities and community groups. There is a TSI in each of the council areas in Scotland, making this a great way to reach a range of potential volunteers in your local area.

Face-to-face

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.

Search a list of potential partner organisations

Print

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.

Make Your Mark brand toolkit

Subscribe to our e-newsletter

We issue a monthly e-newsletter featuring the latest in inclusive volunteering.

Our e-newsletter is aimed at volunteer-involving heritage organisations, but would be of interest to anyone keen on inclusive volunteering best practice.

Subscribe to our e-newsletter