Hooray for Volunteers
Challenging Narratives: Critical Docent Training in a Canadian Art Museum
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Emily Grace Keenlyside
In an art museum that actively promotes inclusion and wellness, how can we train docents to question dominant narratives and sensitize them to the ways in which their own lived experience shapes their engagement with artworks and museums — and consequently their dialogue with the groups they serve? This paper highlights efforts to introduce critical content into a skills-based training course for prospective volunteer guides in a major Canadian art museum. Over the course of 2017, artists, cultural workers, political activists, and select media challenged the dominant celebratory narrative of Canada’s 150th and Montreal’s 375th in order to underscore the ongoing colonial histories inherent in these anniversaries. Such was the context for revamping previous efforts to situate guiding within broader questions of representation and privilege. The author will describe a training workshop that introduces participants to key concepts such as cultural appropriation, decolonization, cultural literacy, and pluralism. She will also introduce early data findings, assessing the extent to which new guides remain cognizant of the concepts covered in training, welcome and integrate multiple narratives into their dialogues with visitors, use inclusive vocabulary, and choose to facilitate learning with artworks created by traditionally underrepresented artists.
Sharing Experiences: Volunteer Motivation and Retention in an Art Museum
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sarah C Graves
Volunteers are essential to the success of nonprofit organizations like museums. This research explores the motivation factors for volunteers in an art museum setting, in particular the individual motivations for remaining at an organization for a period of time not less than one year. This study examined the lived experiences of volunteers and how these experiences affected volunteer satisfaction and volunteer retention. This research examined the following as possible motivation factors: management, roles and responsibilities, initial motivations for volunteering, and types of satisfiers and dissatisfiers. The research utilized a phenomenological case study, first with a pilot study and followed up with a full case study, that employed mixed-methods to examine the research question: What is the relationship between volunteer experiences and volunteer satisfaction and retention in museums? In order to answer this question, the following sub-questions were examined: What are the factors that lead volunteers to join museums; What are the motivation factors that lead to volunteer retention; What are the factors that lead to volunteer dissatisfaction; and What is the relationship between factors of volunteer motivation for volunteering and retention. Increased understanding of volunteer motivation and factors of satisfaction or dissatisfaction may improve volunteer retention and increase the potential for future volunteers and volunteer programs.
The Impact of Volunteer Motivation on Organizational Socialization for Volunteers in Heritage Tourism
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sebastiaan Raymaekers
This project explores the interaction of volunteer motivation and the process of organizational socialization (OS). This process of socialization is the process through which newcomers integrate into an existing body of “workers” and learn about the job, organizational values, required skills, and hierarchy and power relations on the work floor (Feldman, 1981, p. 3). The outcomes of OS have been identified to include retention, improved morale, lower turnover, improved skills and efficiency, and better service quality (Cooper-Thomas and Anderson, 2006). In recent years the area of applying classic human resource management to volunteers has become a focal point of research. The mixed results on the efficiency of classical HRM for volunteers has proposed that volunteer resource management (VRM) needs to adapt and complement classical HRM (Studer, 2016). More specifically the interaction of volunteer motivation and volunteer learning and volunteer socialization (VS) contexts have been under researched. By exploring these interactions, this project wields an improved understanding of the integration of volunteers and the integration of volunteers with paid employees. By improving socialization for volunteers, the organization can work towards adapting to volunteers and encourage positive volunteer integration. The benefits flowing from this project include practical recommendations for volunteer management and improved volunteer retention and satisfaction. The academic contributions focus on understanding the interaction of VS context and volunteer motivations to assess the effectiveness of Volunteer Socialization (VS) context for volunteers and developing a model for VS within a service sector context.
