Transforming our volunteer experience

To give more young people skills for life, we need more volunteers.

In 2018, we agreed our Skills for Life strategy. Now we want to make volunteering with Scouts easier and more fun, so we can attract and retain more volunteers to help more young people gain skills for life.

Since 2018, we’ve spoken to more than 10,000 people inside and outside of our movement. People told us we need to be more welcoming and make volunteering feel positive, so it's not like more work. We need our learning to be engaging and create useful digital tools to help get things done.

Currently, volunteering at Scouts doesn’t always suit how people want to volunteer. They want to volunteer flexibly, by committing the time they have and being part of a team.

We believe by addressing these issues it will help us to:

• Recruit more volunteers and retain current ones
• Make volunteering at Scouts feel rewarding for everyone
• Consistently and safely deliver a better programme
• Make sure that more young people are gaining skills for life

We’re transforming volunteering at Scouts to make it easier, more enjoyable and rewarding. We’ll be rolling out changes in phases to help us:

• Give a warmer welcome for everyone
• Deliver better learning
• Simplify how we volunteer together

All of which needs to be supported by easy-to-use digital tools.​

What are the changes now?

Right now, we’re introducing:

• Our Volunteering Culture – which is a shared understanding of what we say and do, and how we behave as volunteers in Scouts.
• A move to team-based volunteering.
• Executive Committees will now be called Trustee Boards, and there are changes to Trustees’ responsibilities.

There are lots of details available on our website and changes are being led by local transformation teams in every County/Area/Region. They’re planning how to make the changes where you are, when the right time is and the best way to do them.

What you can do now

Take time to understand our volunteering culture and the changes to how we will volunteer together, and think about what they mean for how you and your team. Do take part in briefings being arranged by Transformation Leads locally so you can understand more about the transition plan in your area.

Improving our volunteer experience will move us forward as a movement and will make recruiting new volunteers easier. In turn, this'll help even more young people gain fantastic skills for life.