How Girlguiding is making volunteering easier through technology

With the guidance, expertise and insight of Girlguiding’s volunteers, together we’re bringing a new process to life – a unit meeting recording tool, so you can mark girls’ attendance and the activities they do in the meeting.

We know technology can help us make things easier, which is why we’re working with volunteers, girls, parents and carers to make the best use of all things digital. In time, this will include replacing GO.

That's why, since 2024, we’ve been working together with volunteers to develop new technology that will mean everyone at Girlguiding can enjoy smooth and efficient ways of working. We’re starting off with a pilot project – a small-scale test, which will allow us to check that everything is working as it should before we roll out the technology to more people.

So, what is the pilot?

You may have seen a blog from assistant chief guide Mhairi last year explaining that we were about to get going on a pilot project. For this first pilot, we’re exploring a specific part of the unit administration - recording a unit meeting. We've chosen this because research we conducted with volunteers in 2024 showed that this was an area we should explore. It’s a process that already exists, but the new tool will offer volunteers a digital option that will be faster and easier. The great news is that any skills builders and unit meeting activities logged on the unit meeting recording tool, including during this pilot phase, are automatically updated on GO too – saving you time.

I've been loving it - it's easy to use, it's intuitive, the boxes are there to tick and it pulls all the information and feeds it back to GO as well. It makes my life a lot easier because I'm not having to carry around extra bits of scrap paper for writing attendance and cross referencing with my term plan. It's just one thing off my plate, which is really helpful.' - Mhairi, assistant chief guide

Another reason we chose this as a pilot is because it’s a piece of work that we can test and learn from quickly, working closely with the people who would use it day to day.

How we’ve been working together

We’ve been designing, building and testing hand in hand with volunteers from the very start of the pilot. We ran workshops and focus groups with a broad range of volunteers to help identify what we should focus on in the pilot. And every decision we’ve made has been guided by our key user group - a group of girls, volunteers, parents and carers who we recruited in April 2024. We worked hard to ensure that the membership of the group reflects our wider Girlguiding community. Their guidance, feedback and encouragement are central to the development of this work.

We’ve worked closely with county commissioners in 2 areas to help choose units for the initial phase of testing. We chose these 2 areas (Scotland and London and South East England) as they’re where our lead volunteers for this work are based. Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll progress to testing with more and more units in different areas. At each stage, we’ll be looking at the feedback, and we’ll implement it before we roll the pilot out further. This gradual increase in users is the way we test and learn, so we can have the confidence to roll the tool out across Girlguiding.

What does this mean for GO?

As we’ve been progressing this work, one of the biggest questions that we hear volunteers asking is: ‘What does this mean for GO?’.

As you'll have read at the start of this article, in time, GO will be phased out. The unit meeting recording tool is the first step in designing a platform that works better for everyone. It's the first step in our journey - the first piece of the puzzle.

In the meantime, there will be a period where both systems are synchronised and running alongside each other. We’ll keep you informed about when and how that will happen over the months and years ahead. We’ll try and make this as seamless a transition as possible, so that more time can be spent with girls, rather than on admin. And we’ll continue to test further developments out with volunteers in the same way we have with this project. Together, we’re building a better system one piece at a time.

You may also be wondering how soon everyone will be able to use this new system. Throughout the pilot, we’ve been listening to what volunteers have been telling us, testing if it works and making sure that any bugs are being fixed. We’ll carry on doing this throughout the summer term and start rolling out the system throughout the summer.

If you have any questions about this work, want to get involved or are simply interested in finding out more, contact us by emailing [email protected]. And remember, we’d love your help on the next stage of testing this work! Keep an eye on our hub to stay up to date with what’s happening.