Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Impact On Older People’S Wellbeing Of Leaving Heritage Volunteering And The Challenges Of Managing This Process, Bruce Davenport, Andrew Newman, Suzanne Moffatt

The Qualitative Report

The benefits of volunteering for older volunteers and for the organisations who host them is well-documented. The impact of being obliged to leave volunteering due to age-related conditions, and any challenges that this creates for volunteer managers, are under-researched. This study explored how volunteers and volunteer managers experienced this point in the volunteering lifecycle and whether the topic warranted further research. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with fourteen older people, who were (or had been) volunteers at one of three cultural heritage organisations in the north-east of England alongside seven volunteer managers from those organisations. These represented the diversity of …