How Girlguiding Inspire got its name

Lead volunteer Nicola shares how we consulted with thousands of members to name our community for young women

Nicola Hilliard, lead volunteer for Girlguiding Inspire
24 November 2020

Naming Girlguiding Inspire, designed for members aged between 18 and 30, has been a long process. 

We’re really excited about our community – which brings together everything young women can do with Girlguiding - and want to make sure the name hits the right note. Since beginning the process in 2017, we’ve initiated a new lead volunteer and after hearing from nearly 3000 members we are very excited to now launch our new name.

How we started

In the middle of 2019, we started to roll the opportunities out across the UK, with our country and region coordinators recruiting for county coordinators and events happening all over. However, we continued to remain nameless as previously suggested names did not resonate with the steering group or the membership.

Back to the drawing board

We wanted a name that everyone could be excited about and proud of so put our thinking caps on and asked members aged 16 to 30 what they wanted from a name.

From what they said we learnt that our name needed to:

  • Not have girl or guiding in it twice
  • Be short
  • Differentiate the 18 to 30 community from a section, like the Brownies or Guides

We also learnt the characteristics that members wanted our name to be associated with. They wanted a name that created a sense of community and the great opportunities available to our members.

One warm Saturday in October 2019 a naming team gathered: one naming consultant, four local volunteers, two members of the national steering group, a few comms staff and some of our national volunteers.

Between them much tea was consumed, thesauruses consulted and sticky notes stuck.

Looking at all the research and the different requirements, the team came up with five names and four of those names made it through. They were:

  • Girlguiding Inspire
  • Girlguiding Futures
  • Girlguiding Leap
  • Girlguiding Connect

Next it came to the members

This time we used a new form of testing for the name. It was an approach in-line with our commitment to testing new ideas and being driven by what volunteers want and need.

I feel they (the new list of names) summarise the 18 to 30 community as being connected to others, the future and inspiring both themselves and others – Girlguiding member

Members compared names against each other rather than just having a first choice. They then reviewed them against the criteria we previously discovered were important. Our final step was testing the names with young women who weren’t members and fortunately everyone agreed.

The results were very clear: Girlguiding Inspire had over a thousand more first choice votes than any other.

It was 79% of members’ first choice with respondents being significantly faster to pick Inspire as their favourite. We asked both members and women who have no connection to Girlguiding which name they thought fitted best with Girlguiding and 86% of respondents picked Inspire first.

Girlguiding Inspire was strongly associated with "Exciting” (83%), “Happy “(81%) “Interesting” (74%) and “Friendship” (70%). The next runner up in popularity, Girlguiding Connect, was strongly associated with “Social” (83%) but fewer people found it “Interesting” (69%).

We are incredibly proud to share our new name with you and build on the incredible work Girlguiding Inspire has already done.