My TRAINS just came, and it inspired me to post these questions. Simply to do a quick pulse of our museums. Any comments on the state of your volunteer workers at your Museum is appreciated.

I'll start. Interestly, when we started operations on the San Diego & Arizona Railway in 1986, we ran three trains on weekends with a five person crew, two on a motorcar, and one Trainman per car. That pace went on for several years, and we sent MANY (like maybe 50+) volunteers into the "for pay" railroading jobs. I guess if we could get them to send us 10% gross of their pay check, we would be doing great!

Over the years, we have lost more volunteers than gained. We struggle to staff fewer trains, even though we are going longer distances with more passengers than when we started. We usually crew with 3 to 4 volunteers.

While we are doing OK financially, I hope we can regain younger volunteers again. Our operation of a steam locomotive brought in new volunteers, most of whom have left after the steam locomotive couldn't run anymore.

So, I do worry about the long term health of our Museum. When our ship does come in with a HUGE financial donation, as some other Museum's have done, I guess we will be financially OK. However, train operations do take alot of manpower - in crew and mechancial volunteers.

What's your experience?

Jim, I think you touched on an important point: having operating steam seems to be a huge draw for volunteers (especially younger volunteers), financial support, and patronage. It's not coincidence that as steam operations get more and more difficult from both the cost and logisitics aspects that all of the above is going down for most operating museums.

Chris J.

The "old timers" who started our Museum are pretty much gone now. We aggressively recruit new streetcar Operators but for the most part they're not "railfans" or "trolley fans" so after a year or three the novelty wears off and they're on to something new (and better?). I'd estimate that if we recruit ten new streetcar Operators five will be gone within the first three years and another two or three more by the fifth year.

This is nothing new to smaller museums like ours. The thing that worries me the most is that the knowledge and expertise in our shop is aging and we don't have the young people to learn the trade of streetcar electrical and emchanical repair. So sooner or later something will break and we won't have the knowledge or hands to fix the problem.

What we somehow we need to do is to tap into the baby boomers who are now retiring and looking to keep themselves occupied by doing something useful. How do you contact these folks is the burning questions we're grappling with at the moment. Buy a local portion of the AARP mailing list, perhaps? Any ideas or lessons learned from other museums?

We have had some marginal success tapping into the local retired teachers group.

On a related post, please see "Swept Away by History" in flimsies to learn of the struggles of the Museum of the Confederacy.

Wesley

We have tried to make a concerted effort to bring in younger volunteers to our Collection. It hasn't been easy, but we have been lucky in that we have found a very dedicated 14 year old who is head over heels into railroading. His father and occassionally his younger brother also are active volunteers. We are carefully grooming this younger set. We also have a few volunteers in their 30's, and 40's.

Like most museums we also worry about getting new blood into our organization. Most of our regular volunteers are in their 60's, 70's and a few in their early 80's. These individuals have brought and continue to bring great skill sets to our operation and their loss will be greatly felt.

With most kids intersted in video games and such, it can be hard to get them interested in our organizations.

Jim,
Your question about involving baby boomers got me thinking about turning a proposition on its head, namely, "How do you get volunteers to the museum?"
What if you could reverse that proposal and try to figure out how to get the museum to the volunteers?
I live in downtown Chicago. IRM is a long, long way away.
But I might (Might) be interested in participating if somehow something that interested me could be brought in closer to where I am.
What if potential volunters could be pinpointed wherever they are, and given something to do that they are interested in and didn't have to commute to the worksite?
In the case of the IRM, for example, is there something that could be done online with the Pullman collection?
Or could a volunteer refurbish seats in his own garage?
Make parts in his own woodwork shop?
Then only have to show up onsite occasionally to bring the fruits of his "Cottage Industry Volunteerism" to the museum?
What about people who have home machine shops who could repair parts? Or whatever?
Any merit in this idea?

I live 70 miles from OERM and feel pretty much the same way. Fortunately for me, the newsletter editing and check disbursements do not have to be done at the Museum campus.

I have asked about other things like the seats you mention. History has settled that for now. In the past, well meaning and excited volunteers took away "homework". In some cases they lost interest and it was difficult to retrieve the artifacts. In the worst scenario, we lose contact altogether and their project is lost.

I suppose safeguards could be put in place to allow this. What policies would need to be enacted to monitor work at home with Museum artifacts?

What role does steam play in bringing in volunteers? I have no idea. Might just be a wash, might pay dividends.

AARP - might be a good idea. Articles about your museum, either in the local rag or on the air is a good idea - let them know you are there.

Home projects - must be a TRUSTED volunteer. We lost an entire model A engine.

One of the key objectives of internal control is adequate physical custody of assets.

In a costless and effortless world, one would have a unique ID on every item the organiztion owned, casualty insurance on all the assets, have a registry of removed assets, independent check in and check out, periodic review of these records and assets to ensure proper recording and execution of removal/return. In addition, there'd be fidelity and surety bonding of all employees who handle assets of the organization.

As it is, those steps would be prohibitive, so don't expose your organization to the risk of loss. Even if EVERYBODY is perfectly honest-would you risk some artifact being destroyed in an automobile accident?

Which stood for "Service Corps Of Retired Executives". They used be a way to get the services of retired professionals who would assist with tax-exempts, start ups etc that presented some problem or situation that the individual found interesting.

How about tapping Americorps or going through these volunteer clearing houses like http://www.usafreedomcorps.gov/ or the 1000 points of light organization

Dear Superheater,

You stated " Even if EVERYBODY is perfectly honest-would you risk some artifact being destroyed in an automobile accident?" The answer is yes and anybody who has shipped parts via the highway system (or any transportation system) to be worked on has done the same. If we did not we would not be able to complete our task.

Respectfully,

Robby Peartree

This would be no different than the topic we discussed earlier about inter-museum loans. What real guarantees do we have when any artifacts move around? In the context of the initial discussion in this thread, I assumed the question to be, How can we get more volunteers? Given that, a blanket "never" or "no way" solves another problem (losing artifacts), but leads nowhere in facilitating volunteerism. Play along for a minute in assuming that the aforementioned problems with offsite work could in some way be managed, what would those policies look like?

I doubt that there are any guarantees. We do not even insure most of our collection because it's irreplaceable. I think that is typical in some museum management circles. A bigger issue for me is that many of our volunteers also have private collections. The temptation may be greater for those to "misplace" something. I am not implying that it actually does happen. In fact the most committed and trustworthy volunteers we have would fall in this category, but conflict of interest is rarely broached with regard to artifacts.

Here at the Elgin County Railway Museum in St. Thomas Ontario I would say the number of active volunteers is about the same as it was 10 years ago, but most of them are now in their late 60's and 70's, with a few even in their '80's. We are going to have a serious problem within 5 - 10 years if we can't get some younger blood in soon.

Having anything that operates has to be draw to any museum. All we have to offer right now is dirty, back breaking labor in laying track (when we can afford ties) and chipping paint and scrapping rust. Any wonder we cannot find volunteers?

Later!
Mr. Ed