Welcome to 1st East Hagbourne Guide unit and 1st Barton Ranger unit – 2 units we have funded recently. 1st East Hagbourne Guides are the first project unit in Oxfordshire and 1st Barton Rangers are the 3rd new unit in Cambs East! Don’t forget, if you are opening or re-opening a unit, it is probably eligible for our new unit grant. In the next month, we hope to update this to reflect the fact that many Girlguiding programme materials are now free.
June is a very busy and exciting month. Many units are going away or getting ready to go away for summer adventures. Girls might be trying to finish up badges they’ve started so they can be awarded for them before the summer holidays. It’s also Volunteers Week which will run from 3 – 9 June and will finish with the Big Held Out campaign (7 – 9 June). These two initiatives give us the chance to show our appreciation for existing volunteers but also encourage more people to get involved. Here are some top tips for using these celebration days well.
Cherish existing volunteers
In Girlguiding Anglia, we have over 10,000 volunteers supporting guiding at all of our levels. From people that help occasionally through to volunteers that help at weekly meetings. There are also those that volunteer flexibly at county events or by being a peer educator or a trainer. Every volunteer is precious and we appreciate you all.
Many areas will celebrate their existing volunteers by sharing what makes them special on social media, sending small gifts through the post or a simple thank you email. Can you think of a volunteer to thank?
Use the Big Help Out to connect with one-off volunteers
Maybe you have a campsite or a meeting venue that needs a bit of love? Use the Big Help Out App to get one-off volunteers. This type of volunteering has become very popular in the years following the pandemic. Lots of people are looking to support their local community without making a lasting commitment. You could use people power to clean gutters and windows, maintain outside spaces, take away unwanted items, deep clean kitchen or bathroom spaces.
You’re not restricted to the weekend
1st St Ives Rainbows are offering their unit meeting on Tuesday 4 June as a taster session using the Big Help Out App. They’ve got a science themed evening planned and promise lots of giggles. Adults are encouraged to attend for a taster of volunteering for Girlguiding. They’ve shared how Girlguiding gives girls a space to have fun, explore their own interests and learn to be good members of their wider community. Whilst, the Big Help out is focused on the weekend of 7 – 9 June, you’re not strictly restricted to this. There’s an audience of people with an inclination to explore volunteering in their area. They’re community minded and want to join with others to make a difference so show them how they can do that with Girlguiding.
Give everyone a warm welcome
Whether someone is volunteering on a one-off basis, coming to a taster night or have registered as a new volunteer and are looking for a suitable role, it’s important that everyone gets a warm welcome. Girlguiding recently updated their webpages on this but my favourite top tips are listed below
- When you agree to meet, make sure you include all the details – they might seem obvious to you so don’t forget to include date, time, location and what to bring or wear.
- Ask if there are any adjustments that you can make so they can be fully included and make the most of the session.
- Suggest meeting for a quick chat before the girls arrive. It’s ok to ask how to pronounce their name or what pronouns they use.
- Make sure to supervise them during their visit. This means not leaving the volunteer alone with young members until they’ve completed the required recruitment checks.
- Within a few days of their visit, send them a message to follow up. Thank them for helping and ask them if they’d like to continue or explore other opportunities to volunteer with Girlguiding. They don’t need to make a decision right away – they can visit the unit up to 4 times before committing.
For more advice on welcoming new volunteers, take a look at the Girlguiding website on this topic.
If you’ve enjoyed this blog and would like to read more about the project head to our first blog.
Last month’s blog, next month we wrote 2 blogs! Blog 1 and blog 2
Return to the member support page
This month’s pathway is ‘leading the way’ which is all about developing leadership skills. There are so many amazing leaders within Girlguiding helping girls from 4-18 year olds to try new things and reach their potential. But building leadership skills, is not just for the girls, it can be really empowering for you too.
Being a unit leader isn’t the only way we can be ‘leading the way’, you could try leading a one-off activity in your specialist subject with a unit or on a pack holiday. If working with adults is more up your street, you could look at any county roles that are available where you can support volunteers to improve their own guiding experience.
Leadership skills can give you greater confidence, improve the way you communicate, and can help to inspire others to take initiative and make better decisions for themselves as well as for others around them.
If you’re from Hertfordshire, and would like to take part in creating a new and exciting Inspire challenge, where you can meet other Inspire members and share adventures together, contact the Inspire team on inspire@girlguidinghertfordshire.org.uk
We’re thrilled to announce our partnership with circular fashion pioneers, Swoperz, circular fashion pioneers for children aged 6-16 years old. With the UK in lockdown and 2 young girls to keep occupied Swoperz’s founders, Vicky and Charlie, sat through another socially distanced garden fashion show. As the kids rummaged in each other’s wardrobes, excited to swap and share their clothes, the idea for Swoperz was born.
The girls found empowerment in taking charge of their fashion decisions, free from the influence of their grown-ups. Liberated by the idea of experimenting and having fun with their wardrobe, they enthusiastically inspired their friends to join in. Charlie and Vicky followed suit, and found themselves fielding inquiries from adults and children eager to be part of the movement.
Swoperz is the only preloved kids’ marketplace where children aged 6-16 years are in control. Kids snap and upload unwanted items whilst browsing through hundreds of high-quality preloved garments in an environment that is designed with their needs in mind. Swoperz understands the inevitability of children outgrowing clothes. They’re committed to saving time and money for families with growing kids every day.
Swoperz is an empowering, disruptive, next-generation marketplace positioned to redefine consumption habits through its innovative approach and strategic partnerships. There’s a significant disconnect between kids and their knowledge of the detrimental effect fast fashion and overconsumption have on the planet. Swoperz aims to educate the next generation of consumers to make more informed lifestyle choices.
Swoperz wants kids to be in control of their style, but always with a conscience. So, they’ve created a safe, grownup-verified environment. Kids can swap their clothes without any worries about the planet or their online safety. Safety isn’t just a promise; it’s Swoperz’s guiding principle. Children’s welfare remains paramount, safeguarded within their verified environment. Extending a helping hand, Swoperz facilitates free swapping of school uniforms, uniforms, and sports kits. They are keen to ease the financial burden on parents.
Safety on the platform
Swoperz has adopted the highest safety measures to ensure the well-being of children and teenagers while using their community and enabling safe digital parenting. Swoperz meets the legal requirements relating to children’s safety online. They’ve partnered with a company that verifies that a person claiming to be a child’s parent is indeed that child’s parent or guardian. Because of this process, this presents an opportunity to connect directly and consensually with the next generation of brand advocates.
Swoperz is making waves in the fashion and innovation arena. They are the winners of the eBay Circular Fashion Innovation Fund 2024. Family Perks partners with Go Henry, among others. Together, we can regenerate the planet and use fashion for good!
For further information, head over to Swoperz’s LinkedIn and blog pages.
Why a volunteer recruitment campaign?
In 2023, in response to feedback from our members in our Together we inspire surveys, we created and launched our volunteer recruitment campaign, Pass it on. Members asked for more support and focus on recruiting volunteers to ease the burden of administration pressures and build resilience at local levels and throughout the organisation.
We joined forces with an external agency, Creativity Unbound, to develop a campaign that would help us recruit volunteers, raise brand awareness, and cherish our existing members, reminding them that they are awesome.
You’re awesome… Pass it on!
Our aim has been to build brand awareness for modern Girlguiding across Anglia, reminding people that Girlguiding is still going strong, and to support the local ask for volunteers in our counties across Anglia.
Launch day
On 8 May 2023, we launched our Pass it on campaign with a big fundraising event at The Forum, Norwich. 50 volunteers courageously took the plunge and abseiled from the top of The Forum, whilst others sang campfire songs, sold cakes, and helped spread the word about Girlguiding.
We were thrilled to have been joined by our team from Hautbois Activity Centre who led midi-fencing and soft archery, our retail team supported visitors with merchandise and uniforms, whilst the team from Girlguiding Norfolk’s Archive Resource Centre shared their wonderful history of guiding displays. We were also excited to welcome reporters from the BBC and ITV, who shared coverage of the event, both on screen and over the radio.
The event received an amazing reaction, particularly on Facebook, where our engagement rate soared above all expectations. The event raised over £7000 to support the Pass it on campaign, and it’s delivery at region and local levels. So a massive thank you to everyone who attended, our amazing abseilers who raised so much sponsorship money, and members of the public for getting involved wholeheartedly.
Thanks, must also go to our special guests for their attendance: the Lord Mayor and Sheriff of Norwich, our partners easyfundraising, and children’s presenter and author, Jess French. We were honoured to have you all there supporting us and getting involved in helping us reach more potential awesome volunteers.
Next steps
Following the launch day event, we initiated the next phase of the campaign, including bus and radio campaigns, alongside an online advertising campaign, which began on launch day. We received so many photos of our bus adverts out in the wild across the region – some of them are even still out there today! Our radio campaign was fun, energetic and had a fantastic response from the public, listened all the way through by 93% of listeners, which is amazing! Our online campaign called for new volunteers to join us and share what makes them awesome with the women of the future. The campaign ads that featured on both Facebook and Instagram were viewed 55,758 times and reached 28,000 people!
The all members call
We knew how important it would be to bring our local members onboard with the campaign, so they could utilise the campaign assets and resources to best support that local ask for volunteers in communities across the region. At the start of the campaign, we ran an ‘all members’ call, hosted by our region chief commissioner, Karen Johnson, to introduce the campaign, explain its purpose and let leaders know how they could support the campaign.
The Promote and Grow challenge
We created a Promote and Grow challenge badge for our members, because who doesn’t love a badge? The challenge supports members to help us spread the word about Girlguiding, build brand awareness and take advantage of PR opportunities. The badge is still available and free to claim as long as members complete at least 5 of the suggested activities, and we have now sent out over 730 badges!
Local recruitment packs
We were able to secure some funding to put towards supporting the recruitment campaign at a local level. We invested in unit recruitment packs which contained leaflets and flyers for display in community areas and thank you cards intended for existing volunteers or parent helpers. Nearly 3500 packs were sent out to unit leaders, with a few leaders getting in touch to request additional leaflets to share – there are still top ups available for leaders, just get in touch via hello@girlguiding-anglia.org.uk to claim some!
Website development
To support the Pass it on campaign, we developed new areas of the website to provide more information to volunteer enquirers. During the opening months of our campaign (May and June 2023), our new volunteering webpage was viewed almost 1,000 times. We also made the jump to Google Analytics 4, to ensure we could continue using Google’s analytical functionality in tracking website campaign activity and seeing our return on investment.
The impact
What impact did this first phase have on our volunteer numbers? Well, volunteer joiners in June 2023 were higher than they’d been in the same month for the last 4 years. And our volunteer leavers were lower in June 2023 than in 2019, 2021 and in 2022!
The campaign continues
Phase 1 of our campaign was full on! In the next phase we took a more focused approach, attending freshers’ fairs to target students who could be recruited into our Inspire community of volunteers aged 18-30. With the support of funding from the Uniformed Youth Fund, we went out to Anglia Ruskin University’s campus in Cambridge, and the University of East Anglia. From these events, Girlguiding Cambridgeshire East received 20 enquiries, and Girlguiding Norfolk received 14 enquiries.
We were pleased to join Girlguiding UK in supporting Children in Need in 2023. During November, we took the opportunity to reach out to families with girls on our waiting lists, to ask them if they would like to join in the fun. We got in touch with over 9,500 contacts, sharing our Children in Need activity pack, our spot-kick challenge and links to the volunteer recruitment campaign for parents interested in getting involved in Girlguiding alongside their daughters.
The impact of the campaign was still showing later in the year. Volunteer joiners in September 2023 recovered to pre-pandemic trends and are higher even than they were in 2019. Plus, volunteer leavers are still lower in September 2023 than they have been in the last 5 years.
Pass it on… 2024 – what’s next?
After the momentum we built in 2023, the charity’s trustees were keen to maintain the investment in volunteer recruitment. After presenting results from 2023 and plans for 2024, the communications and growth teams received the full backing from the executive committee to invest in the ongoing campaign. We are delighted to be able to continue the project and to support our regional investment with external funding.
This year we’ve already undertaken extensive development of our LinkedIn strategy to support reaching new audiences potentially interested in volunteering, organisations implementing volunteering schemes for their employees, and potential partners who can help us bring more amazing opportunities to our volunteers and girls.
Volunteer enquiries
In January, we launched a new enquiry mailout for contacting potential new volunteers, welcoming them to the organisation and signposting them to some excellent resources. We also shared our ‘Welcome to Girlguiding Anglia’ resource which shares all of the amazing opportunities for flexible and regular volunteering available in Girlguiding.
International Women’s Day
On International Women’s Day, we used our campaign to share some shocking statistics brought to light by Girlguiding’s Girls’ Attitudes Survey 2023: 1 in 10 girls believe they’re hardly ever given the same opportunities as boys. Girlguiding provides an incredibly important girl-only safe space for girls to grow, learn and have fun. Using an online campaign across Facebook and Instagram, we called for people to volunteer with Girlguiding Anglia and help us build a more equal world.
The region roadshow
We have great plans for our region roadshow in 2024. We kicked things off with the RSPB at 3 of their reserves across the region: Rainham Marshes in Essex, Minsmere in Suffolk, and The Lodge in Bedfordshire. Deputy chief commissioner, Claire Course, and assistant chief commissioner, Chris Skinner, joined over 260 girls at the reserves to experience the outdoors, have adventures, and promote wellbeing. Our events with the RSPB were followed by a visit to Girlguiding Hertfordshire’s 110th anniversary event, attended by region chief commissioner, Karen Johnson, and hundreds of girls from across the county.
Coming next
Our new online campaign will be launching soon; if it crosses your Facebook or Instagram feed, please give it a like or a share. We’d love to reach more potential volunteers who can help our members continue the great guiding experience they offer to over 44,000 girls in Anglia.
Website development
We’ll be continuing to review the user experience on our website to support further development in 2024. We’ll be looking at how to bring even more new volunteers in through our website by providing more information about different types of volunteering opportunities for enquiring volunteers. We’ll also be making recruitment assets more accessible for leaders to use for local recruitment.
Waiting lists
Following the success of reaching out to adults of girls on our waiting lists, including Children in Need 2023, Brownies Go Explore 2023 and Super Rainbows 2022, we will be sharing new opportunities for these girls to get involved in 2024, sharing with them our brand new Summer Quest challenge. The challenge will be launching to our full membership in May half term 2024.
The region roadshow
Our next region roadshow event sees us at the Suffolk County Show at the end of May with volunteers from Girlguiding Suffolk. We’ll be attending the Essex and Norwich Pride events this summer, with many other counties supporting Pride in other cities across Anglia. In September and October, we’ll be visiting university campuses to attend freshers’ fairs, highlighting volunteering opportunities to students and reconnecting relocating students with the Girlguiding communities in their new homes. Keep an eye out to see where we’ll be popping up in your county over the coming months.
Volunteers’ Week 2024
Volunteers’ Week 2024 will be the flagship marker for our recruitment campaign this year. We’ve been busy creating a hero video to share across Volunteers’ Week and other waves of the Pass it on campaign. Make sure to keep an eye out for it coming across your social media channels and our website. Don’t forget to give it a like or share to keep the message going.
Hearing from you
We’ll continue keeping you up to date on all our recruitment activities on our social media, website, and newsletter, Signpost. Don’t forget, if you need any support or any resources, get in touch with the region team via hello@girlguiding-anglia.org.uk.
As in our previous plans, our main focus in this next phase will be brand awareness at a regional level and supporting our members’ local recruitment. We’d love to know if there’s anything we can do to support you more with your own local recruitment campaigns. Please get in touch and share your thoughts and needs.
Thank you to all our members for their support and hard work, you’re amazing… Pass it on!