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Explore how Girlguiding UK is embracing diversity through new membership models, partnerships, and pilot projects aimed at engaging new communities and fostering social inclusion. Learn about their initiatives, benefits, and future steps to increase diversity and promote growth.
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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?
