Supporting volunteering across the sector

By working together and sharing ideas, we support volunteers to have positive and rewarding experiences.

These efforts help create a stronger, more welcoming heritage sector, where volunteering is open to everyone, well supported, and recognised as an important part of caring for Scotland’s history.

Historic Environment Scotland is a key partner in the Make Your Mark in volunteering campaign. Make Your Mark supports everyone in Scotland to volunteer with history, culture and nature organisations.

For volunteers, this means connecting with organisations that care for Scotland's places, history and culture. By volunteering, individuals can discover Scotland's stories, care for local places, meet new people, develop skills, network with staff and get behind-the-scenes access. 

For volunteer-involving heritage organisations, Make Your Mark promotes volunteering opportunities, connects heritage volunteer organisers to a peer-to-peer network, organises inclusive volunteering events, shares best practice and evidences volunteering impact to lobby for more funding for heritage volunteering programmes.

Over 150 heritage organisations across Scotland have signed up to become Make Your Mark members, committing to making their volunteer programmes more inclusive by removing barriers to volunteering and recruiting a diverse range of volunteers.

Take a look at Make Your Mark

Developed with partners around the sector, the Skills Investment Plan (SIP) supports everyone who cares for and works in Scotland’s historic environment, including staff, apprentices, freelancers, and volunteers. 

The main aim of the SIP is to make sure the sector has the right skills to protect, manage, and share heritage now and in the future. The plan identifies volunteering as a vital part of building a skilled and resilient workforce, and helps organisations to strengthen their approaches to volunteering. 

This is done by ensuring roles are well-designed, supported, and aligned with future skills needs, as well as upholding the principles of good volunteer practice.

Read the Skills Investment Plan

By working together and sharing ideas, we support volunteers to have positive and rewarding experiences.

These efforts help create a stronger, more welcoming heritage sector, where volunteering is open to everyone, well supported, and recognised as an important part of caring for Scotland’s history.

We work in partnership with volunteer-engaging organisations to support volunteering at our properties in care and within the communities. We offer resources such as

• sharing partners’ volunteer opportunities on our portal;

• spotlighting partners’ volunteering in our volunteer newsletter, Making Connections;

• and access to our volunteering programme training and resources.

As a proud champion of Volunteer Scotland's Volunteer Charter, we promote the charter’s principles across the heritage sector. We encourage other organisations working within the heritage sector to adopt fair, inclusive and high-quality volunteering practices. This helps to ensure that volunteers are properly valued, supported, and able to make a meaningful contribution.

Read the Volunteer Charter