Making recruitment easier - collaborating with Scouts

We’re starting a joint project with the Scouts to transform how both organisations engage new volunteers, thanks to the support and generous donation of over £2million from Pears Foundation.

This funding will be used to review and improve the joining experience, including putting in place digital tools to make recruitment easier now and in the future. We’ll also be reviewing 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 push innovation.  

Jack Caine, Volunteer Head of Volunteering at the Scouts, said: “Having worked with Girlguiding to put the proposal together for this work it is clear that both movements face very similar challenges and opportunities when it comes to recruiting volunteers. 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 carry out improvements to help make it easier and quicker to recruit new volunteers – giving them a better experience. 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’s 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. Keep an eye out for more information.