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Volunteering at Scouts is changing to help us reach more young people

Volunteering is changing to help us reach more young people

Volunteering is changing at Scouts. Read more

Discover what this means

People

People

Our aim: More well trained, better supported and motivated adult volunteers, and more young people from diverse backgrounds. 

Progress a year on…

When the pandemic began, we changed our plans to make sure Scout groups were supported. 

This hasn’t meant that our long-term work stopped – we’ve been working hard behind the scenes to make sure we make the most of the opportunities ahead. 

For example, we’ve been trialling new ways of working with volunteers in our early years pilots. We moved essential learning for all volunteers online to make it easier to complete, and we updated our adult recruitment tools to make sure they can be used without people meeting face-to-face. 

We’ve partnered with Girlguiding, funded by Pears Foundation, to transform our approach to those crucial early stages of a volunteer’s journey with us. As part of this, we’ll use technology to put them in control of their experience for the first time. 

What’s next 

To make all of the changes possible, we’ll need better digital tools and resources to support volunteers. So, we’re looking into how we make it easier for volunteering managing Scouts day-to-day with a new digital learning system and new tools for adult membership management.  

Attracting, recruiting and retaining volunteers 

– We’re looking into how we can make our website clearer and more useful for potential and existing volunteers.   
– We’re running a targeted recruitment campaign in areas that are ready to welcome potential new volunteers (and providing support and resources to help volunteers get ready).   
– We’re improving our local processes and the digital systems that support them, to transform recruitment and joining in the long term – creating a more inclusive and accessible experience.  
– We’re changing the types of volunteer roles at Scouts, making them more task and team focused with clearer links to supporting the delivery of programme.  

Transforming adult training 

– We’re revising our essential training and making plans to improve how volunteers are supported as they learn.   
– Volunteers have told us that our training needs to be flexible, focused on programme delivery, and easy to operate, deliver and record – making sure it’s accessible for all of our volunteers.    
– We’ll offer a ‘blended learning’ approach, so it’s digital first but includes workshops and ‘on the job’ learning too.   
– We’ll test a new five-step approach to section leader training to make sure it’ll work on the ground.