Volunteering
Many organisations in the sector involve volunteers or indeed are volunteer-led.
In Spring 2016 Historic Environment Scotland commissioned research to update statistics on the amount and impact of volunteering in Scotland’s historic environment sector. BEFS helped shape the research and supported dissemination of the survey via its members.
The research was carried out by Volunteer Scotland. Key findings indicate that 17,100 people gave their time for free during 2015 and that 46% of organisations surveyed would not exist were it not for volunteers. The same number of volunteers were contributing to the historic environment in 2018 (SHEA 2018). The research commissioned by HES identified around 1000 organisations active in the sector. However, authors recognised that there may well be double this number.
The full report is available here:
Volunteering and the Historic Environment
Executive summary of the report
Further details on the case studies used are available here: