Volunteering
If you are interested in volunteering please contact the membership secretary to become a member and tell the secretary you are interested in volunteering. Membership provides the valuable insurance necessary to undertake volunteering activities for the charity. We also invite you to consider joining our member lottery to help us raise funds.
Volunteers come in many shapes and sizes from physical labour, clearing shrub and digging out gun rooms or selling some teas and souvenirs in the shop, showing people around the museum or general cleaning of the barracks and toilets. Any experience of servicing our generators or any kind of general building or plumbing skills are very useful. There is also plenty of grass to cut and clearing the vegetation is especially important to support the birdlife.
We carry out archaeological digs and there is the curatorship of the museum if you are interested in the history of the island. We regularly restore features of the island for historical interest like railings for the steps to the search lights or kitting out one of the gunpowder rooms to its original furniture and design for historical interest.
You may be interested in working in ecology and looking after the wildlife on the island, carrying out surveys of the birds, flora and fauna and recording the findings. We also have visits from dry stone wallers so these type of skills are more than welcome.
There is also the option to help out with our onshore administration, so if you have IT, social media, finance, marketing, legal or computer/website skills or any kind of administration experience that would be useful.
You may be willing to become a trustee or perhaps you could take the minutes of our trustee meetings that are held on a Saturday morning, every couple of months throughout the year, near Weston Super Mare. Invites for new trustees will be sent out with the AGM documents to existing members. A total of 12 trustees can be appointed.
There is a lot to do and you do not have to commit to every trip. We suggest you book one trip to assess the island and think about what you may be able to do and speak to the other volunteers whilst you are out there for more information before you commit. We can agree a schedule based on the relevant tides over the season or some winter stays for the really enthusiastic.
Bear in mind trips to the island can be cancelled at short notice as we need very calm wind conditions for the rib boats to get over safely.
You will need to become a member to volunteer and depending on the number of offers we may have to focus on particular skills required at the time but any help you can offer is more than welcome whether onshore or offshore.
Link to the BBC broadcast on volunteering on Steep Holm. We had a large number of enquiries since the broadcast and all offers of help are welcome but will need to be managed according to the availability of sailings, the skills required and the costs. Of course there is also a lot of work onshore to promote the island and fund raise, as well as work on the island itself. We really welcome and appreciate all the fantastic responses we've had and whatever you can offer is more than welcome.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-66152963
Channel 5 have visited the island
