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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

Volunteer experience

Improving the volunteering experience at Scouts

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We want to make sure our volunteers feel valued for everything that they do and most of all, we want them to enjoy their experience at Scouts.     

We know we need to recruit and retain more volunteers if we want to keep growing and provide more young people with skills for life. 

However, there needs to be more support in place to make sure there’s a great local welcome, with a smooth, integrated learning experience, as well as good ongoing support.      

Volunteer actions

  • Join our Volunteer Experience Group to get involved with testing and be one of the first to hear about new updates 
  • Make sure you’re up-to-date with your existing training requirements, especially safety, safeguarding and first aid 
     

To watch in full screen, double click the video

Our focus  

How we volunteer  

Throughout 2019 and 2020, we spoke to lots of people (more than 5,000), both inside and outside of Scouts to understand what we need to do to improve the volunteering experience.      

Based on what we learned, we’ve produced a new vision for how we volunteer to make it easier, more rewarding and more fun.   

 Ultimately, we want to make sure:   

  • Every volunteer is welcomed  
  • Every volunteer is supported  
  • Every volunteer is valued  
  • Every volunteer gains skills (and has fun!)  
  • Every volunteer matters    

We were due to communicate our vision with members in March 2020. However, due to COVID-19, this project was paused until September 2020. In the meantime, we’ve been working on how we can make this vision possible.  

We need to create a modern and fit-for-purpose volunteering culture with skills for life at the core (that’s volunteer-centric too). We’re working on volunteer culture guidance to increase accountability and transparency, outlining Scouts’ commitment to volunteers and a volunteer’s commitment to Scouts. The aim is for the guidance to reflect the key improvements to the volunteering experience.  

Attracting, recruiting and retaining volunteers   

  • We’re looking into how we can make our website clearer and more useful for potential and existing volunteers
  • We’re running a national recruitment campaign (#GoodForYou) 
  • We’re improving our local processes and the digital systems that support them, to transform recruitment and joining in the long term – creating a more inclusive and accessible experience
  • We’re changing the principles of volunteer roles at Scouts, making them more task and team focused with clearer links to supporting the delivery of programme.

Transforming adult training   

  • We’re revising the essential learning and making plans to improve the full learning experience.  
  • We know our training needs to be flexible, accessible, focused on programme delivery, and easy to operate, deliver and record.
  • We also need to offer a ‘blended learning’ approach, so it’s digital first but includes workshops and ‘on the job’ learning too.  
  • We’ll test a new five-step approach to section leader training to make sure it’ll work on the ground.  

To make all of the changes possible, we need better digital tools and resources. We’re looking into how we make the day to day management of Scouts easier and more efficient, with a new digital learning system and new tools for adult membership management.  

What's next?

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