'Don’t have time to drain the swamp; too busy dealing with alligators’: defining the governance skills sets that enhance volunteer retention and recruitment in small arts and cultural organisations
Small arts and cultural organisations are facing a number of significant challenges through the ongoing austerity programmes impacting on their funding and practices. These challenges are made more complex and problematic through the isolation and time poverty they experience as a result of small budgets, less paid staff and through primarily volunteer run governance. There is a contradiction in inherent in the importance of recruiting and retaining volunteers and the on-going capacity of volunteer governance. This paper seeks to identify and explore these tensions and contradictions by identifying governance skills sets that can support the volunteer function, and inform a training process that is practice-based and overcomes the limitations of isolation, funding and time
