Volunteer Your Time

Charity Administration & Support

• Help to co-ordinate and support our programme of field meetings in summer and lecture programme in winter.
• Work with staff to run day-to-day Society affairs: processing memberships, dealing with enquiries from members and public, processing mail shots, etc.

Marketing, Publicity & Communication

• Update this website with upcoming events and activities and images supplied by members.
• Update electronic displays about the Society in the Great North Museum.
• Help promote our work and events to the press and media and find new outlets to promote the Society.
• Help write articles for the Society newsletter and e-newsletter.
• Carry out market research on our members and evaluate our activities.
• Help organise and attend events and promote the natural world and the work of the Society.
• If you are good at IT and have experience of using desk-top publishing packages such as Quark and Adobe you can help produce the Society  newsletter and Northumbrian Naturalist publications.
• Take good quality photos that we could use on our website or in our publications.

Project Development, Grant Applications & Fundraising

• Help research suitable funding bodies, grant giving organisations and wealthy philanthropists.
• Help make approaches to funding bodies and complete grant application forms.
• Help to develop Society plans into projects that can be put forwards for funding.
• Research ways that the Society could improve its ability to generate income and help to take these ideas forwards. For example we would like to benefit more from legacies, donations and fundraising campaigns.
• Research ways that the Society could increase its profile and increase membership.
• Develop and carry out a small fundraising campaign.

Nature Conservation & Research

• Help produce a new Management Plan for our nature reserve.
• Undertake practical conservation work and nature reserve management.
• Input records of flora and fauna into the NE Environmental Records Centre.
• Train to be a qualified Bird Ringer.
• Help to edit and typeset scientific papers for Northumbrian Naturalist.
• Help to develop the Society plans into projects that can be put forwards for funding.
• Carry out your own research using Society resources such as our nature reserve, library, archives and museum collection.
• Are you a keen wildlife gardener? There is a small wildlife garden in the education area outside the Great North Museum: Hancock and we need a volunteer to help look after this and ensure it fulfils its potential as a small wildlife area and educational resource. You would need to use your own small hand tools.

Publishing

• Help to edit scientific papers for Northumbrian Naturalist.
• Delivery of our publications in the area where you live.
• Helping to label and fill envelopes, sort for delivery and frank postage.
• If you are good at IT and have experience of using desk-to publishing packages such as Quark and Adobe you can help produce the Society newsletter and Northumbrian Naturalist publications.
• Carry out your own research using Society resources such as our nature reserve, library, archives and museum collection and submit your findings as a paper for the Northumbrian Naturalist.

Museum Archives Research & Recording

• Help us to photograph the plant specimens in our collection as part of a national project.  For more details click here.

If you have relevant training or previous experience of working in archives then we are looking for long-term dedicated volunteers to help us with research, preservation and cataloguing of our important natural history archive.