Firstly, this is a post written by me and does not reflect the views of any of the genealogical or other groups that I maybe associated with.

This post has been in draft waiting to be published for more than a couple of months. I hesitated to post because it seemed to be a moaning and whining post. This morning, having got up early, with the first thought related to my Trusteeship of an organisation I decided to post, having written this first paragraph which I have inserted.

As many readers know I am the Trustee of the Guild of One-Name Studies, in fact I am currently the Chairman. I became a Trustee in 2015, and a decade ago we had a flush of volunteers. Yes, we did have vacancies, but not as many as we have today. The situation has got worse since the pandemic and this is not a situation isolated to the Guild, it affects many genealogical (and others) groups.

As members of genealogical societies we pay our subscription, read the journals and access the website, hopefully taking full advantage of our membership benefits. What we perhaps do not consider is that those membership benefits that are free to members, are not free to offer. The society has to pay for website hosting, domain name purchases and many other things that enables the society to visually function.

What we do not see, is the volunteering that enables that functioning visibility. Where there are vacancies the Trustees fill the gap to ensure that we can continue to be the best organisation we can be for the benefit of members and the public. So what is the reason for this post?

In the summer, I received an email from someone who wrote to tell me that they had written to me the day before and I had not responded. The reason for my delayed response of 24 hours was the occasion of my 30th wedding anniversary. The content of the email is irrelevant, other than to say it was not an emergency note. I wrote back, apologising for the delay and explained why I had not replied sooner. I answered their question and directed them to the relevant information, ending with the invitation to contact me if they had further questions. No further email was received. No acknowledgement, no thank you, simply silence.

As I said earlier, my first waking thought this morning related to a Trustee matter. I looked at my phone, the time was 4.35am. Alas, the moment I wake up is when my brain switches on, I very rarely go back to sleep, and today was no exception.

Volunteering matters because it shares the workload, and reduces volunteer burnout.

It means that volunteers that serve as Trustees and Committee members can slot in actions and tasks relating to volunteering, around other matters, rather than other matters taking a back seat to volunteering.

The next time your genealogical society calls out for volunteers consider if you can help. The adage of many hands make light work has never been more important.