Audiocast: Scarborough Rangers get a head start with DCMS funding

Hear how one leader made use of government funding to welcome Rangers in her area

22 January 2025

In this recorded interview, we spoke with Scarborough-based leader Fiona about how funding from DCMS (Department for Culture, Media and Sport) helped her welcome Rangers in her area.

As the Guides in Fiona's unit were getting older, she noticed that they didn't want to leave Girlguiding, but were concerned about moving to Rangers. This was because they didn't have a Rangers unit nearby and the Guides didn't want to leave friends and leaders they knew.

So Fiona applied for some DCMS funding which she used to launch Rangers as part of a newly joint Guides and Rangers unit. We spoke to Fiona about how the funding has benefitted the unit and girls. 

Listen to the interview with leader Fiona

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Interviewer: Lovely. So, thank you so much for chatting with me today, Fiona. So, could you introduce yourself, name, location and how you volunteer at Girlguiding?  
 
Fiona: Yeah, my name's Fiona, and I run a joint Guides and Ranger unit in Scarborough in North Yorkshire.  
 
Interviewer: Amazing, and how did you first get involved with Girlguiding?  
 
Fiona: I was born into it. My mum was a Guide leader. And, you know, even before I was in Brownies, she was helping at camps and things so I just went along with her there. Her Guides bought me my first teddy bear, which was really nice, which I’ve still got. Then as soon as I could be a Brownie, I joined Brownies, then went to help a friend at her Brownie pack when I was a Guide as a pack leader, went on to be a young leader and then moved in to Guides from there. Then I've been doing it for 36 years now.  
 
Interviewer: Wow. Amazing. So, it really is in the blood.  
 
Fiona: Yeah, absolutely! 
 
Interviewer: Amazing. And, well, thank you so much for, you know, all that time that you've given and obviously it makes such a huge difference, so thank you for that. And I'm glad to hear that you, you know, started when you were so small, and you enjoyed it so much that you carried on through. 
 
Fiona: Oh, absolutely. 
 
Interviewer: So how do you specifically volunteer with Girlguiding? Talk me through, how you volunteer?  
 
Fiona: I run… I'm the main leader really at the Guides and Ranger unit, and I have a great team that work with me. I’m also local depot person - I run the local depot for the division. 
 
Interviewer: Nice, so you wear quite a few hats there.  
 
Fiona: Well, not as many as a lot of people. 
 
Interviewer: So, when you're leading, do you also cover the finance and everything there, or do you have a team of helpers and flexible volunteers that help you out?
 
Fiona: I do the finance, and I do most of the planning, but we sort of work as a team, but I sort of, do most of the admin and that sort of thing. We were quite lucky, we had a big-ish team anyway, and various people can do different times, and we've got one leader who isn’t able to come at the moment, but she'll drop back in when her work pattern changes and stuff like that. So… but we've got a core that can come every week, so we've got enough leaders to be able to cope with running Guides and Rangers. And then my mum, she does all that kind of, going to the bank with the money and photocopying things and, paperclipping notices together so they’re all in the right bundles and anything that needs sorting out and cutting up and putting into right sized bags for the Guides so that each patrol's got their own thing. She, she does all of that, so it's a huge amount really, because it's all those little things that take up a lot of time.  
 
Interviewer: Yeah. I mean, so when you turn up on the day, you can kind of go: ‘Okay, it's all done for me. Brilliant. Let's focus on the girls.’  
 
Fiona: Yes. That's it. You know, I can get on with the actual meetings and everything, knowing that when I pick up a bag and I’ve said what we're going to do, everything's in there in the right… usually in a marked bag for each activity. So it’s lovely.   
 
Interviewer: Brilliant. And so you've recently received some money from a DCMS grant. 
 
Fiona: Yes. 
 
Interviewer: I was wondering if you could talk me through what you did with that money, please?  
 
Fiona: Yes, it enabled us to… Well, we were just a Guide unit. And so we had a lot of older girls who didn't want to leave Guides. And I think particularly since Covid, they've been quite wary of anything new. So even though we were trying to persuade them to go to a Ranger unit, their nearest Ranger unit was quite a ways away and it was different. They didn't want to go anywhere new; they wanted to stay with what they knew already. So, we were sort of wondering whether it would be feasible to do a joint Guide and Ranger unit, but we weren't really sure. So then when we got the funding, it just made it possible to, I suppose, have a new start for them, if you like. So it meant we could get their uniforms from it. We had handbooks, we had record books. We could get all the program cards, all that extra skills builders that we didn't have for the Guides. And it really meant that when - we started last September - so it meant we could really say ‘right, come back in September, it's exactly the same as you already know, because you're coming to the same place with the same leaders. But here's your new uniforms and you're now Rangers’ and it really gave them a sense of identity, rather than if we hadn't had the funding, we might have had to do a little by little.  
 
Interviewer: And it's really kind of like, it's given them like, a boosted start as well. So it's, it was enabling the girls to continue. 
 
Fiona: Yes. 
 
Interviewer: Yeah.  
 
Fiona: And there's sort of, you know, little things like, we could buy them some nice felt-tips which we wouldn't buy the guides because they're not very capable of putting lids on. And so they just run, you know, run out really quickly. Whereas for the Rangers, we could say, well, we've got some nice ones because, you know, you're older and you're more capable and you've got them, you know, just like and things like that. But it actually made a huge difference to them feeling more grown up as well.  
 
Interviewer: Yeah, I guess and that also shows that, you know, you guys kind of have that trust in them as well that they would stay. And, you know, you could see that they wanted to be there. So you've…  
 
Fiona: Yeah.  
 
Interviewer: like you've put that trust in them that you've got that money and you are creating it for them. That must be amazing for them in that they're like, these people want to be here for us as well.  
 
Fiona: Yeah, I think so. I mean, they’re not very vocal about stuff like that, but they come every week and they're really enthusiastic. So yeah, there's obviously something there that they, they enjoy.  
 
Interviewer: Oh, amazing. So, my next question was, you know, have you been able to do any kind of events or additional like outings and things like that with the grant? 
 
Fiona: We didn't spend the grant that way, and it wasn't the way it was framed to us when we were given it. It was very much for a start-up for the Rangers. But it has meant that things like: we've given our first year census payment. So that really helped because the money that we would have spent on that we could then spend on doing things with the girls, and sort of, subsidise trips. We haven't done anything massively that’s just been for Rangers yet, but we sort of, try to give them their own space within Guides. And when we do trips or outings or anything, they get a bit more responsibility to be themselves rather than have to, you know, be a younger one. They get that additional responsibility and the additional kind of, ‘yeah, you start off and look around by yourself or whatever’, but we haven't actually done anything major for Rangers yet.  
 
Interviewer: Okay, cool. And in terms of, you mentioned that it started in September, is it just the original girls who have come or have you seen anyone outside who's also joined? Who might have been on a waiting list? 
 
Fiona: The original Rangers that were near us closed down. So we did have a couple of girls from there pop in, but we have had new girls come. 
 
Interviewer: It's creating that opportunity for girls if they, if we wanted to.  
 
Fiona: Yeah, yeah, it's really nice to have the opportunity and it's nice for the… even though the younger Guides are still going ‘no I don't want to go to Rangers’ actually when they hit 14 they're kind of ‘oh yeah, it’ll be…’ And you know, why don't you just go and try that activity with them? And so they just do it. And then the next thing you know, they're working with them really well. So it's nice having them both in the same space with the same leadership team.  
 
Interviewer: Absolutely. And you know, during that time there's so many things changing, I guess it's super nice for them to have that constant as well and have that, ‘okay, cool, the name will be changing and there might be some activities changing, but we're still here.’ You’ve got that relationship that you've also already built with the leaders, as you mentioned. And then one more question from me is, you know, what do you think is special about Girlguiding? It can be in relation to your specific unit or you know, what you think of Girlguiding as a whole or… 
 
Fiona: I think it's because it's a girl-only space, and I think even if you talk to the girls, they wouldn't necessarily say they wanted a girl-only space. But having come along, it means they can be themselves. It's not as competitive as I find mixed environments and they, they can grow. I mean, it's lovely to see them when, when you're seeing them as maybe you've known them as a Rainbow or a Brownie. And then now a Ranger, you know, and they're developed and grown and become more confident people. And you could just see that and you can… I can't see any other organization that they grow as much in the same way. They might learn skills elsewhere, or they might learn a specific thing, but it's the kind of, it's the teamwork. It's the coming in very shy, not wanting to speak to anybody and then running activities for other girls or whatever it is that they do. And it's just it's lovely to see them, that development over the years.  
 
Interviewer: Yeah, and it's so lovely to also see the leaders develop as well, because we have such a range of different types of leaders, seeing them from their first start of leadership. And then when they've been in it, you know, 5, 10, 15 however many years.
 
Fiona: It is, and we've got, we've been really lucky. We've got a great young leader at the moment who came through the Guide unit, and one of the young adults again came through the Guide unit. And so we've got leaders right from in their 60s down to in their 20s, you know, so we've got a… it's really nice having that experience. And the new ones and the younger ones bring in something different. They've got different life experiences they can bring to it and new things and new ways of doing things. And then the older ones have sort of got their experience. It's a really, really nice mix. And then a couple of the Rangers have gone on to be young leaders now, they've just started in the last, month or so, so you know, you can see the next generation of leaders growing.     
 
Interviewer: Amazing, wonderful. Well, I hope that, you know, the Ranger unit goes from strength to strength. I'm glad to hear that the DCMS funding was so successful for you guys. And I'll hopefully I'll be checking in in the new year as well to make sure it's all going well.  
 
Fiona: Excellent.  
 
Interviewer: Amazing. Well, thank you so much for talking to me, Fiona.  
 
Fiona: Thank you.  
 
Interviewer: Thanks for listening to this Girlguiding audio cast. If you'd like to learn more about volunteering with Girlguiding, check out our website for more details. 

We spoke to Fiona about how the funding has benefitted the unit and girls. She told us how through the creation of the joint unit, the girls in the Guides are more comfortable moving up to Rangers.

They've also received and are trusted with new equipment, which has given them confidence and a greater sense of responsibility. This was a noticeable step up from their time in Guides.

The DCMS funding has also benefitted those outside of the original unit, opening up the opportunity for new girls in the area to join.

New units in England, and those that have increased capacity, can contact their region offices to see if they're eligible for support from the DCMS Waiting Lists project. The project runs until the end of March 2025.

For other funding ideas, check our guidance on applying for funding from trusts and foundations.