Girlguiding and Scouts to collaborate on joint recruitment project

We’re starting a joint project to transform how we engage new volunteers, thanks to the support and generous donation of over £2million from Pears Foundation. This funding is intended to review and improve the joining experience, including putting in place digital tools to make recruitment and joining easier now and in the future, as well reviewing our processes to support joining.

Girlguiding and the Scouts face many similar challenges and we’ve been working closely to work out how we can solve some of these together, sharing learning and best practice to reduce duplication of effort and stimulate innovation.

Jack Caine, Volunteer Head of Volunteering at the Scouts said, “By working together, we can recruit more volunteers allowing us to impact the lives of more young people from more communities. I am very excited about being a part of this work and cannot wait to see the positive impact it will have on both our existing and new volunteers.”

Through this project, we’ll review how we offer a welcoming and inclusive experience and implement improvements to help make it easier and quicker to recruit new volunteers and make their experience better. We want to meet the needs and expectations of volunteers now and in the future looking for responsive and flexible opportunities.

We also need to reduce the admin burden for current volunteers and this is where a digital tool comes in. We’re planning to source a system that helps volunteers recruit and enables potential volunteers to easily access the information they need when they need it.

We know there are lots of volunteers who support both movements, so we want to explore how we can remove barriers and volunteer more collaboratively.

Emma Dixon, a senior volunteer supporting the project at Girlguiding said “This project is such a great piece of work to collaborate on. Not only will it truly transform and improve the way our organisations recruit and welcome new volunteers, but it also helps shout out to the wider world about our modern, flexible, and innovative approach to volunteering!”

This is a two-year project, so things won’t change for a while as we need to make sure that changes are genuinely positive and sustainable. We’ll keep talking to you about this and there’ll be lots of testing and piloting before we start to roll things out to the movements.