Dear Girlguiding
Answering your questions on recruiting and retaining new volunteers
Illustrations by Hikimi/agencyrush.com
Dear Girlguiding is our question and answer feature exclusive to the magazine. In this issue we’re answering the major question on every volunteer’s mind: ‘how can I recruit and retain new volunteers?’
As volunteers, you’re the heartbeat of Girlguiding - keeping everything running and making sure girls across the UK can experience exciting adventures, friendship and growth. As we all know, it’s so important we have enough volunteers to support guiding and provide a fun, safe space for all girls.
With this in mind, we’ve teamed up with our lead volunteers and members of staff who specialise in recruitment to provide you with useful tips to tackle this challenge.
Dear Girlguiding...how can I attract new volunteers to my unit?
There are lots of tools and resources available to help you welcome new volunteers with fun and enthusiasm. Here’s some inspiration on drawing in new volunteers:
1) Make use of our resources
We’re here to help you: we know our volunteers are tight on time. That’s why we’ve put together handy resources to reduce your recruitment workload and save you time.
Take a look at the toolkits we share during our national recruitment campaigns – these will equip you with key messages, ready-to-post social media captions, high quality images, resources to warmly welcome new volunteers and more.
Did you know we also have marketing materials you can personalise for your unit? Head over to our online design centre where you’ll discover pull up banners, posters and even more social media graphics to amplify your recruitment call far and wide.
2) Embrace digital and local recruitment approaches
Share the magic of volunteering! Make your mark on social media platforms by posting your stories and experiences as a volunteer.
But also, remember to explore local recruitment drives that offer face-to-face connections.
Ann, growth and retention specialist, shares with us a creative way to bringing in volunteers: ‘One of the leaders in Bedfordshire had the idea of “Bring an adult”. The idea is that the adult could be a parent, another family member, or family friend, or a neighbour. Following this idea, Girlguiding Anglia has produced a “Bringing you to us” resource, packed with ideas for running these mixers.’
A 'bring an adult' mixer is a great way to show people all the fun of guiding
Tip: Lisa, growth and retention specialist, suggests that if you have a larger unit, it might be worth staggering which girls bring someone along to ensure it’s not too busy. That way everyone at the ‘bring along’ night gets a true flavour of what Girlguiding is like.
Ann also shares, ‘Girlguiding Staffordshire ran a successful 3 week challenge, called “Grown-ups in Guiding” as a way of increasing the number of adults in units.’ Week 1 begins with grown-ups observing and at the end of the challenge, week 3 hopefully ends with grown-ups registering on GO.
Community action is an excellent opportunity for your girls to actively support the local community. But it can also be a powerful way to showcase Girlguiding.
Alison, lead volunteer for growth and retention, emphasizes, ‘Being seen out and about in uniform, whether it’s doing litter picking, visiting the library, or making links at local events, it is a great way to raise the profile of Girlguiding. And it lets our community know we’re here - come volunteer.’
Whether it’s online or offline, enthusiasm is contagious – let your excitement inspire others to join the fun.
3) Invest in young leaders
Our young leaders are special to us. Even if they may want to take a break from guiding when they head off to university, among other endeavours, it’s important that we support the budding leaders in our units.
Alison shares, ‘I was a young leader before I went to university. When I came back, I still wanted to stay connected with Girlguiding and volunteer. I volunteered in my home county for another ten years before volunteering near the university where I used to study.’
Check out our guidance on working with young volunteers.
4) Tap into the power of parents
Alison recalls, ‘At one of the units I led, we had some parents who really wanted to help out. They were amazing, they ran activities on the weekly Wednesday night unit meetings – and we could work behind the scenes, handling the GO stuff and other outstanding admin tasks.’
Lisa shares a similar sentiment: ‘I remember talking to a parent after a unit meeting, and they showed me some of the badge work they were doing with their Guide – I asked them in to do an activity with the girls.’
She emphasizes that volunteers shouldn’t miss the opportunity to ‘get to know the skillsets of parents in your units. Even if they don’t volunteer regularly, every little bit helps. Maybe they can complete a task, if it’s something they regularly do in their day-to-day, or run one specific activity. That’s one more task or evening taken off your shoulders.’
'Parents are a treasure trove of potential volunteers that we have a direct connection to. Talking with them, hosting mixers and inviting them on away days are a great way to show parents how much their child enjoys guiding. But it’s also a chance for us to find parents who want to join in and are just waiting for the right moment.
‘We took our unit weaselling recently,’ says Allison. ‘It’s a little bit like caving but above ground, the kids absolutely love it. One of the girls at our unit was a bit hesitant at first, as it was quite muddy, but by the end she was absolutely bouncing in and out of all the tunnels and rocks.
'Some of the parents stayed after dropping off their kids as it was only an hour-long session in the countryside. They watched the girls do this activity and got to see the smiles on these girls’ muddy faces – the magic of guiding.
'I think parents get bogged down in the admin side of things, like we do sometimes, between all the consent forms, health forms, subs, emails. So, I think it’s important that we make the most of the little opportunities we get to show parents what we do in action. And you never know who might want to stick around for more.’
Get to know people's skillsets - there'll likely be a few different tasks they can help out with
We're struggling for leaders and want to get more parents involved - any tips?
We know that parents often have busy schedules, and finding the time to commit to full-fledged volunteering can be a challenge.
Alison remembers how, ‘One of our units had lots of inquiries from girls wanting to join, but we didn’t have enough adults to help run the unit. In this instance, I turned to the parents for support. Some parents just couldn’t help out, but they took our request home to see if other relatives like grandparents, or a sibling over 18 could offer a bit of time.’
Putting forward the option of flexible volunteering, or ‘micro-volunteering’ as Lisa calls it, can certainly make a big impact.
Lisa shares: ‘You can start by inviting parents to lend a hand by staying for the first 10-15 minutes of a meeting to deal with any letters, or envelopes coming in from girls. This will allow you to set up your activities. You could ask parents to stay 10 minutes after the meeting to help you update GO with what the unit has done that night, while you pack down from the meeting.’
Ann highlights some other flexible behind the scenes opportunities which could be opened up to parents: ‘Treasurers, unit administrators who support with forms, GO and risk assessments, as well as simply advisors who could handle inquiries, marketing or social media.’
Alison mentions, ‘One of our parents is a great PR advisor. She posts on social media for us and schedules content when she's putting her kids to bed. It's something parents can do during their day to day, in those spare moments or when they're out and about. It doesn’t require too much effort from parents – particularly when it comes to sharing recruitment content as we've got lots of ready-to-go captions and images to share from the toolkits.’
Tip: It’s important to make sure lines of communication with parents are clear. This could involve setting up a WhatsApp group or a closed Facebook group. It could even be a newsletter that you could let a parent run.
‘Unit shoppers are also really great. The way it works is parents can fold in what the unit needs into their weekly shopping, or they can order items online at their own leisure. And when they come to drop off their child at the next unit meeting, they drop off the items as well,’ Alison says.
‘I’m always trying to empower the parents to be more proactive – we have a Facebook group and I delegate the task of sharing reminders in this group to other parents. They would post things like “Don’t forget about Brownies tonight”, or “Don’t forget about the deadline to turn a form in”.’
With all micro-volunteering methods, parents get a taste of volunteering – and who knows, they might come back for more.
How can we keep the people we’ve recruited?
Ensuring new volunteers feel valued and included right from the start is essential. We understand there is a wait time between registering interest to join and being able to go to volunteer at a unit – and we’re actively working on improving this. In the meantime, there’s lots you can do to keep new volunteers keen and engaged.
In our new guidance on warmly welcoming new volunteers, you can find resources and clear steps on how to help new volunteers feel at home, right from their initial expression of interest. The journey begins with inviting them to their first unit meeting, and hopefully, leads to disclosure checks and a smooth onboarding. You’ll also find a handy checklist of everything you need to share with your new volunteer.
When new volunteers come to your unit, do introduce them to all the girls and parents. Lisa shares, ‘Although it seems small, doing this helps volunteers feel included right from the start.’
She also suggests gradually easing new volunteers into their responsibilities. This will prevent them from feeling overwhelmed and give them the chance to learn the ropes at their own pace.
‘And don’t underestimate the power of a job well done.’ Lisa adds. ‘I always make sure to share positive feedback, and let my volunteers know they’re doing a great job. In the hustle and bustle of things, this can be easy to miss, but it makes such a huge difference to vocally recognise the outstanding work our volunteers do.’
Saying thank you is so important - check out our recommendations on how you can make it happen.
We want to hear from you – do you have any volunteer recruitment success stories? Is there anything in our guidance on recruitment and retention that could work better? Do you have any questions for a future issue of 'Dear Girlguiding'? Fill in this form with your questions and comments.
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