Developing inclusive volunteering in heritage and nature-based organisations: a mixed methods evaluation

Research team:

Professor Martin Webber
Dr. Beth Casey
Dr. Chandani Nekitsing

Dr. Annette Bauer, London School of Economics and Political Science
Dr. Stephanie Tierney, University of Oxford
Professor Ailsa Cameron, University of Bristol

September 2025 - May 2028

Project Summary:

Being a volunteer helps people to learn new skills, meet others and feel better about themselves. Volunteering can help people in many ways, such as recovering from mental health problems and finding employment. Many organisations cannot operate without volunteers, who play an important role in their communities. Some people with a disability or mental health problem may not consider becoming a volunteer because of low confidence or a lack of appropriate skills. However, it often takes just a little support to help people make the step into volunteering. Organisations which support people to volunteer make volunteering more inclusive.

Our previous research explored how inclusive volunteering worked in a small museum. It identified key ways of supporting people to volunteer. From this research we developed a Guide to Inclusive Volunteering. This study aims to explore how best to help different museums and nature-based organisations set up similar inclusive volunteering programmes. It also aims to investigate how inclusive volunteering benefits people, organisations and wider society.

We will bring the six organisations taking part in this study together in a ‘Community of Practice’. Staff and volunteers from these organisations will meet monthly to discuss how they are developing their inclusive volunteering. They will also get one-to-one advice from the museum that took part in the first study.

Aims and Methods:

The research will have three components, in which we will:

1. Watch and interview between 8-12 people within each organisation. This will include volunteers, staff and people who refer others to the inclusive volunteering programme. We will explore how each organisation develops its inclusive volunteering and how this may vary across organisations. We will also explore the experiences of staff and volunteers. This information will help us to gain a better picture about how inclusive volunteering works. We will use this information to revise
our pre-existing guide.

2. Interview about 80 new volunteers who have joined the inclusive volunteering programmes in the organisations taking part in this study. We will measure their mental wellbeing, loneliness, support available to them, goals and services used. We will interview them after 3, 6 and 12 months to observe change over time.

3. Ask managers and staff in each organisation about the time they spend supporting volunteers and provide information relevant to sustaining and extending inclusive volunteering. We will calculate the costs of the services people use. We will develop a tool to help organisations calculate the costs and benefits of developing an inclusive volunteering programme.

Outputs

We will share the findings in conferences and online seminars. We will publish the revised guide and cost-benefit calculator tool on our website. We will produce a short report, articles for academic journals and a short video about the research.

Funder: NIHR School for Social Care Research.

Keeping in touch: Please join our mailing list to keep up to date with the progress of the study or to let us know if you have used the Guide to Inclusive Volunteering in your organisation. Thank you!