Volunteer

Making new friends, working in amazing places and knowing that you're helping a great cause - three fabulous reasons to get volunteering

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Volunteers in the current situation

Volunteers have always been at the heart of the work of the National Trust in caring for nature, beauty and history and we are really grateful for your interest in volunteering with us. At the moment, our staff and volunteer teams are working hard to safely reopen more of our places. While we focus on reopening, many of our places won’t be able to support new volunteers joining the team just yet.

When we're ready to involve new volunteers, we'll promote volunteering opportunities here on our website. Hopefully we'll have a volunteering role that will be just right for you. 

Read our reopening and coronavirus FAQs Keep up to date

Conservation volunteers cleaning ceramics at Dudmaston, Shropshire

How volunteers help us care for our collections

With over one million collection items to look after at over 200 historic places, we have our work cut out. We wouldn’t be able to do it without our dedicated volunteers. We're highlighting our conservation volunteers and sharing their stories, favourite objects and conservation tips.

Let's hear it for our conservation volunteers

" In many ways this year has been a challenging one for us all, but I am so grateful to our volunteers for their ongoing support and patience. As more of our places have reopened it’s been wonderful to hear how volunteers have played an important part in warmly welcoming visitors back to our sites."

Caroline is a volunteer room steward at Chartwell, Kent — Caroline is a volunteer room steward at Chartwell in Kent

Meet more volunteers

Get to know the volunteers that give up their time to care for our places in this round-up of our volunteer articles and profiles.

Read their stories

Ways volunteers help

Hughenden's volunteers busy cleaning the statues in Spring

Conservation cleaning at our places

Once the covers are off the hard work begins, which means it’s time to start cleaning the historic statuary in gardens and parkland at places like Hughenden, Waddesdon, Cliveden and Basildon Park.

The remnants of a picnic from the 1980s found at Formby

Beach cleans reveal unusual rubbish

Unusual finds have been discovered on the beach cleans you help us with. Some of the objects are decades old, including a ‘Claws’ crisp packet from 1976 and a bottle of rum from post-Prohibition America, both found at Formby, Liverpool. Though weird and wonderful, they show how serious the conservation challenge is for our waters and coastlines.

Volunteer collecting fallen apples in the orchards at Killerton, Devon

Volunteering FAQs

Want to get involved? To help you find the right volunteering opportunity, we've answered many of our most frequently asked questions from our would-be volunteers here.

Find out more about volunteering

We couldn't do it without you

Thanks to over 65,000 volunteers, who in 2018/19 gave more than 4.8 million hours of their time to support the National Trust in more than 500 roles.