Volunteer with GROAM HOUSE

Are you considering joining our band of Groamies? We have a large community of volunteers who support our collections, historical research, and running of the organisation. Like many independent museums, Groam House depends heavily on our volunteer force. There are many ways you can help.

It costs around £16,000 a year just to keep the doors open. In addition, we need to care for, research and interpret the collections entrusted to us. We are determined to keep free entry, so we need volunteers, members, donations, sales and successful events to sustain our finances.

Groam House Museum is currently recruiting new volunteers for the 2024 season!

The work is both interesting and sociable. Volunteers usually work 3 or 4 half days per month during the season (March – October). You can decide when, and as little or as much as you would like to work, so the commitment isn’t too onerous.

Joining the volunteer team is an excellent way of making friends and enjoying the experience in the museum. There are also special benefits for volunteers, including coffee mornings, concessions, use of the museum library and occasional outings.

No experience is required as training will be provided. If you’re looking to build the skills or expand your work experience on your CV, we will provide a letter of reference on request.

To find out more or register your interest, please call/WhatsApp Cindy on 07752 207014 or email cindy.campbell@groamhouse.org 

CURRENT VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES

    • Museum Attendant – We are in great need of additional individuals willing to work a 3-hour shift in the museum at least once a month, greeting visitors and ringing up sales on the till. Full training is provided, and you can opt to work alone or paired up with someone. We are hoping to open with extended hours this season, but we can’t do it without your help. This one is rather urgent, as we open 25th March!
    • FUNdraising & Events Team – Anyone who likes to socialise, come up with fun ideas and share the workload creating museum-based events in our communities is invited to join! This team arranges workshops, book sales, bridge competitions, concerts, and lots more. With all the traditional sources of funding cutting their grants and offerings at the same time the cost of living rises, we need to find new ways to fundraise which also give back to the community.
    • Educational Outreach assistant – Our Educational Outreach volunteer spent last year developing a Curriculum for Excellence lesson plan on the Picts, supplementing a gap in the local educational offerings. We now need to grow our Educational Outreach team and build on the momentum, as there is high demand from the primary and secondary schools in the area. This could be assisting behind the scenes, delivering lesson plans to pupils, or helping us develop new loans boxes.
    • Social Videographer – Are you a techno-guru, someone handy with creating short videos for social media? Working with the manager to determine a content strategy, you would be bringing our collections into the world of social media.
    • Art UK Online Shop project manager – We have this print-on-demand shop already, but could be doing so much more with it!This will require working with our collections team to learn what we have and can sell online, how to describe it, working with the Art UK technology to upload it to the online print-on-demand store, and someone who can understand how to use the promotional opportunities via Art UK.
    • GHM Online Shop project manager – We are ready to launch this on our own website for our gift shop items. If you’ve ever set up your own shop, we’d love to benefit from your experience. We are looking for someone to project manage the fulfilment side, to establish our shipping policies, create the process for daily shipments, packaging, returns, etc.
    • Membership organisation review – This is a short-term project. We are part of so many organisations, and it’s time for a review of which ones we belong to and whether we are benefitting from them, plus an evaluation of other organisations which might be better. This will require communicating with members in the museum to understand what we currently use and need.
    • Awards Writer – We are looking for someone who will look for awards we could be nominated for. Awards raise awareness and profile of the museum, drawing tourists to the Black Isle. We’ve won several in the past and could likely do so again if we were nominated. We are looking for someone who can search out award opportunities and submit nominations, with support from our board.
    • Sponsorship Lead – A great role for someone who knows lots of people and can bend their ear, or wallet! We are looking for someone to take a sponsorship package and negotiate with businesses to make it worth their while.
    • Tourism Ambassador – We need people to help us determine how to better engage with tour groups and develop ticketed events the museum can offer.
    • Translations Project Coordinator – We are not looking for someone to translate (unless you can!) but rather someone who can identify the languages we need, look for translators, identify costs, potentially source grant funding, etc. We receive many international visitors each year, and it would provide a better experience for them if they could read about what they were looking at.
    • Road Signs Smacker – We need someone to hammer the road signs into the ground at certain locations before an event and retrieve them after. We’re looking for someone with their own transport and able to swing a mallet. It’s a great way to vent your frustrations in a healthy manner.
    • Book Movers – speaking of strong people… we are looking for a local youth group who would be willing to help us set up and take down our semi-annual book sale in the village hall. We have a storage area of books that needs to be moved into a vehicle, then into the hall onto tables, then back to storage again at the end of the sale. If you have a local youth group looking for volunteer experience (plus some free books in exchange for their labour), please get in touch.
    • Administrator – We would welcome one or more individuals who are great at making things happen, to manage any or all of the notice boards, postal mail, weekly fire-alarm testing, children’s activities supplies, day book messages, electricity, IT and water bills, etc. This ideally will be individuals who are able to access the museum reliably each week during the season to complete process-led administrative activities in the building.
    • Rota Scheduler – Are you detail-driven and like to know what everyone is up to? We need someone to schedule each month’s shifts by contacting volunteers to identify when they are able to work. It’s not as straightforward as it sounds, so you need to be persistant and flexible, and a sense of humour helps here too.
    • Additional Trustees – looking to the future, we need to begin to build our board with new members.

We offer plenty of social opportunities, training, and support, and it’s just a really great group of people to be around. If you have some time and would be willing to help with any of the above, please get in touch with Cindy on 07752 207014 or at admin@groamhouse.org.uk. We hope to see you this season!