Impact and experience survey 2023

For the first time in 2023, we sent the impact and experience survey to all volunteers, girls aged 14-18 and parents and carers.

Over 10,000 of you completed the survey as well as over 5,000 girls and their parents and carers. Thank you so much, we’re grateful for everyone’s feedback which is helping shape our plans for this year.

The results of the survey showed that girls are having more varied experiences at Girlguiding. There’s been an increase in adventurous activities, mixing with girls in other units and staying away from home all increasing from 2022. And the relationship between volunteers and girls is consistently strong – girls said they respect their leaders and helpers (94% of girls strongly agreed with this statement) and say that their leaders and helpers also treat them with respect. And nearly all our volunteers feel valued by the girls in their units. Thank you for everyone's hard work on building strong relationships with girls  and organising adventures.

Of the volunteers who responded to the survey, 57% felt there was too much admin and that continues to be their top challenge. They also told us that there could be improvements in feeling more respected and listened to, our communications and rewarding and thanking volunteers. The things that helped volunteers during 2023 were the online safe space level 3 renewals and simplifying some of the processes, for example, new risk assessment templates.

What we’re doing

In 2024 our focus is on rewarding and flexible volunteering. We’ll be working on making things easier for volunteers and we want all volunteers to feel valued.

As part of our work to make admin easier, so that volunteers can spend more time with the girls in their unit, we’ve improved the way volunteers log into GO and the learning platform. Now they only need 1 password to log into both platforms. Thank you to everyone who attended the support calls, and to those who have been supporting volunteers in your area with the change.

Volunteers told us in the survey that the risk assessment templates were something they found really helpful last year, so we’ll be providing more of those too. We’re also improving consent forms to make it an easier process to take girls outside the meeting venue.

For volunteers in England and Wales we’re introducing e-vetting for DBS checks, so new volunteers can confirm their ID via an app rather than travelling to an in-person meeting.

We’re also improving our going away with permit and training qualification to make them less admin heavy. These are likely to be launched 2024/2025.

Since its launch in 2017, we’ve received lots of feedback from volunteers on the a safe space training, on what works and what doesn’t. One thing you told us is that the multiple renewal dates can be overwhelming so it’s confusing to know which courses they need to do. We’re updating the training, so that we can make improvements to help volunteers. Keep an eye out for news on this later this year.

Hearing your voice

We’re providing more opportunities for you to have a say in what we do. Over 50,000 of you have fed into the recent uniform consultation. Thanks to anyone who has responded to callouts for feedback on specific policies. We want to keep hearing from you, so if you’d like to have your say on key projects, please sign up to our insight and innovation pool.

Thank you again for completing the survey, we want to continue to work together with you as one team to encourage girls to laugh, learn and have adventures.