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Volunteering at Scouts is changing to help us reach more young people

Volunteering is changing to help us reach more young people

Volunteering is changing at Scouts. Read more

Discover what this means

Digital support

How we’ll give you more digital support to help get things done

How we’ll give you more digital support to help get things done 

In 2023, we’ll be supporting the new volunteer journey by launching new tools for welcoming, learning and adult membership management. These will all be accessed from scouts.org.uk.   

Why we need to transform our digital approach 

External research and internal feedback tell us clearly that the volunteers of tomorrow expect engaging digital support in all aspects of their volunteering. We don’t have that today, so it’s a gap we need to fill if we want to attract and retain great volunteers.   

The impact on volunteers 

All volunteers will be ‘enabled by easy-to-use digital tools’ to help them develop their own experience and to deliver great programmes to young people. 

Those in support teams will find it easier to run key processes, such as welcoming new volunteers, permits, awards and finding contact details for other volunteers. 

New volunteers will find signing up to Scouts easy and efficient.

  • Better tools: easier to use, more flexible, less time consuming  
  • Simplified processes 
  • Volunteers much more in charge of their own learning and own information 
  • Multiple great tools accessed via the scouts.org.uk with a single log in 
  • Some existing volunteers will need more support to adopt the new digital tools – don’t worry, we’re developing support to help 
  • Data quality today isn’t as high as it needs to be. Everybody will need to take responsibility to help us improve data quality across all our new digital systems. We highly recommend you read through what you can do now. 

'Adopting new digital tools always brings a learning curve'

Don’t worry, we’ll be with you every step of the way to provide support.  

We’re changing several things at the same time. This will bring a high workload at a time when we are already busy. 

We’ve got lots of time to plan for the roll-out in 2023 to work alongside your day-to-day tasks. In the end, the changes will make volunteering much easier and more fun. It’ll be worth it!  

In the end 

Your role will be much easier, because you’ll have great digital tools that you can access from any device. Scouts.org.uk will be the first point of call for volunteers needing to get things done.    

What will stay the same 

  • Strong data privacy and child protection controls will be applied 

Who’s leading the digital transformation project 

  • Andrew Sutherland, Volunteer Sponsor of the Digital Transformation Programme 
  • Lara Burns, Chief Digital Officer  
  • Graham Phillips, Volunteer Sponsor Membership System 
  • Prerna Carroll, CRM Programme Product/Delivery Manager Transformation 

What you can do now  

So that our new digital membership system is useful locally we need your help to clean the current data in Compass. Here’s what you can do: 

  1. Review all the appointments listed on Compass for your District/County. Add roles that are current but not recorded on Compass, cancel non-functioning roles and ensure that all roles are correctly updated. We need to make sure that Compass accurately shows all (and only) live, active roles. 
  2. Encourage all your team to check their personal data in Compass, particularly email addresses, telephone numbers and addresses. Remember, the data in Compass will appear in the new digital system. 

A warmer welcome

How we're planning to create a warmer welcome for everyone.

Discover the plans for a warmer welcome

Positive volunteering everyday

How we'll simplify how we volunteer together for positive volunteering every day.​

How we're simplifying volunteering

More engaging learning

How we’ll create a more engaging learning experience.​​

Discover the new learning experience