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Girlguiding UK. New membership models that embrace diversity Jess Bond and Tamsin Fudge. A starting point. Girlguiding UK has half a million members The UK has a very diverse population One of Girlguiding UK’s mission statements is: ‘We are for ALL Girls’. What do we know?.
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Girlguiding UK New membership models that embrace diversity Jess Bond and Tamsin Fudge
A starting point • Girlguiding UK has half a million members • The UK has a very diverse population • One of Girlguiding UK’s mission statements is: ‘We are for ALL Girls’
What do we know? • We don’t know enough about our membership demographics • External perceptions of the charity are that we don’t represent the UK population • By understanding our data we can diversify our membership
What did we start doing? • Secured funding for two projects to directly access ‘new’ communities – Youth United Foundation funding • YUF have a mapping tool that helped us identify the areas of deprivation and low youth provision • Met the charity’s ethos and aims
What were the benefits of the partnership? • To have the opportunity to network with other uniformed youth organisations • To share good practice on increasing diversity • To find innovative ways to grow our organisation • To pilot new ways of working for our future strategy
Pilot projects: Social Inclusion Project Paid development workers working with local volunteers and new communities • Direct focus on new areas for growth • Central management of the project and locally deployed Development Workers • New communities welcomed Girlguiding • Volunteers came from all backgrounds
Pilot projects: Uniformed Youth Social Action Fund (UYSAF) To engage new members from lower socio-economic backgrounds in social action Aims • More social action • More young members • More volunteers • Girlguiding in more communities
What are we learning from UYSAF? • Collaboration between paid development workers and volunteers works well • New communities are very open to Girlguiding • The development worker model has an impact on growth • The model has supported diversification of our membership
What are we learning from UYSAF? • New volunteers are not always familiar with Girlguiding - our resources does not always meet their needs • We now know we need to simplify the volunteer journey • Our next steps need to focus on retention • It is not just about recruitment, but how we support people once they are members
Future steps From the learning: • We shall pilot a new way to recruit and induct volunteers • We shall build on the paid worker partnership model • We shall do more in depth analysis of our data • We shall focus on retention of our members
Activity • What is your biggest challenge around membership growth? • Who would be a possible ‘new community’ for you? • Are there ideas from Girlguiding UK that you could adapt?