The British Motor Museum is an iconic museum that holds the world's largest collection of historic British cars. They have a large dedicated volunteer base with a passion for cars and history, taking the leap to transition. We spoke to Hannah Leese, HR & Volunteer Coordinator, at the British Motor Museum and explored the challenges faced before adopting Volunteero and the positive outcomes experienced post-implementation.
Before Volunteero, the museum primarily relied on spreadsheets for volunteer management. With over a hundred volunteers, this caused difficulties in organising information, leading to inefficiencies and oversights. The introduction of Volunteero marked a significant shift in museum operations. Volunteero has enabled British Motor Museum to streamline tasks by creating rotas and coordinating volunteer schedules, replacing the labour-intensive spreadsheet entries with a more efficient, up-to-date and reliable system.
Overcoming Age Barriers
Despite initial concerns about the adaptability of an older volunteer demographic, the majority embraced Volunteero, showcasing a commendable willingness to navigate new technology. The software's accessibility played a crucial role in the adoption, letting the volunteers ease into this digital transition. Hannah stated, “I've got volunteers who are in their late 80s / early 90s using the app. I'm very pleased that everyone at the museum is embracing the system”.
User Experience and Feedback
Volunteero's user-friendly interface received positive feedback from volunteers, enabling independent scheduling and reducing the need for extensive email communication. The transition resulted in an enhanced experience for both staff and volunteers, saving valuable time and resources. Hannah explained “I'd ask what's everyone's availability for next month. We have a hundred volunteers so I'd get a hundred emails… I'd use spreadsheets and put them into a rota and then I'd send out the rota and there would be multiple amendments throughout the month. The best thing for me is that Volunteero has completely taken away all of that”.
Self-Management
The self-management empowered volunteers to handle their schedules independently, contributing to the sustainability of museum activities. This is one of Hannah’s favourite aspects of having Volunteero, “The volunteers can take control of their own shifts and then they know what they're doing. They can go in and check the ‘my shift section’ and see what they're doing that week. It’s really nice because I don't have to think about sending reminders out to the volunteers”.
Time Saving
Hannah would normally spend around one day a month creating the volunteering rota, taking into account everyone’s ever-changing availability. Volunteero’s shift feature is saving her over 8 hours a month and a lot of admin. In addition, at the end of the month, she would spend around 8 hours going through all the sign-in sheets to calculate Volunteering time and travel expenses etc. This is now automatically done by the volunteers through the reporting feature. She can pull this data off the system every month, including volunteering time, receipts + expenses and any feedback on the sessions.
Favourite Feature
Praising Volunteero's ability to segregate volunteers into different groups, Hannah highlighted the software's capacity for tailored communication based on specific skills and interests. She has set up groups for each specific department in the museum making the volunteer experience seamless and the communication targeted towards specific volunteering roles.
From overcoming manual challenges to streamlining the whole volunteer experience, the British Motor Museum has done a brilliant job adopting Volunteero. As museums continue their digital evolution, Volunteero aids to be an innovative volunteer management solution.
If you would like to learn more about how Volunteero could streamline your volunteer management processes whilst insuring no volunteer gets left behind, please book a demo and one of our wonderful team will be in touch.
