The project began when Bruce (the project PI) was analysing interview data as part of another project.

The interviewee was an older man with dementia, it became clear during the interview that he had recently been asked to stop volunteering at a local heritage site and was upset about it.

At the time, there was very little that had been written about this aspect of volunteering. (There is still very little - we'll add in links to other work in this area.)

This was the prompted Bruce to ask - is this a problem worth exploring? And along with that, if volunteering brings benefits to the volunteer then does leaving volunteering undo those benefits?

A pilot project with 3 heritage venues in the North East of England explored the topic.

The results suggested that this was an issue that was worth exploring and that we needed to consider both volunteers and volunteer managers. But we couldn't answer the second question as conclusively as we would like.

The results are presented in this free-to-access paper.

Following the publication of the paper, Bruce, delivered some talks for volunteer managers, including one for the Heritage Volunteering Group (though Bruce lost his voice part way through!).

The feedback from those sessions was that volunteer managers recognised the situation: many had encountered similar situations and wanted more support and guidance in how to deal with it well.

Bruce wrote the funding application on the back of that work and, happily, the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) decided to fund it.