BAFM SOUTH EAST - WESTERN AREA
Report - September 2009
The Friends of the Royal Naval Museum invited us to hold our meeting in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, culminating in a private visit to HMS Victory.We were indebted to David Baynes, the Volunteer Co-ordinator of their Friends for all his help.
Hand in Hand: Benefits & Bonuses was the theme for the day. Mary Kinoulty and Trevor Sapey, from the Mary Rose Trust, centred on the skills available in their organisation and how to focus these to bring about greater public awareness. Mention was made of their outreach programmes and the constructive use of their Friends in raising large amounts of money needed for the next stage of the site’s development.
Andrew Buchanan, of the Royal Navy Submarine Museum, gave useful insights into how a database and website can be combined to assist management of a Friends organisation. The subscription is stated as a minimum and not as a fixed amount and people are signing up through the website. He stressed that this needs constant monitoring to ensure that it is kept up-to-date.Regarding the relationship of Friends with their museum, Friends are good at recruiting members, raising money and ‘making things happen quicker’ but should not try to influence their museum’s priorities.
Chris Piggott, the CEO of Brading Roman Villa, spoke about how effective Friends and volunteers could be in a very focussed effort. She showed a short film on the Big Digs that have taken place under the leadership of Sir Barry Cunliffe, ably organised by the Friends. As far as their relationship with the museum is concerned, the museum could not run without them – they were her safety net – and featured people who wanted to do something because it is worth doing – the benefits and bonuses from that were incalculable. Volunteers and the museum should regard themselves as a helix – the coiled structure on double stranded DNA with its everlasting spiral curve. Looking at the future, there are occasional gremlins – people who join for their own agenda and those who make the mistake of trying to volunteer grudgingly. Having said that, the Friends have a project programme in development that would put some corporations to shame and a volunteer rota that would be the envy of both English Heritage and the National Trust.
Michael Gunton, the Archivist from the Portsmouth Museum Service, gave a very full and interesting talk on the Conan Doyle Collection which has been bequeathed to the Museum. The sorting and cataloguing has involved a number of non Museum staff which has allowed the process to keep moving. Without this volunteer effort the process could grind to a halt.
There were common themes from the speakers:
- Organisations have not all got a clear idea of what resources they have amongst their Friends organisations
- It is vitally important that there is clarity & leadership from the top of the Friends organisations. Only with these can the process of activation & motivation get started
- Once a task and resourcing is made clear, Friends can pick up the baton and run with it and, with careful management, this can become a characteristic of the organisation.
There were Open Forums on fund raising and attracting new members which were very helpful. The highlight of the day was a private visit to HMS Victory with Peter Goodwin, the Curator, who has been concentrating on a new presentation of the ship, making it a true museum and eliminating some anachronisms (Victorian furniture for example) and so adding to its intrinsic interest. |