Your Adult Recruitment Round-up!

To: all Members
Sent: 15:20 Friday 25 June

Hi

Welcome to your round-up of news from Wrexham Scouts

District Development Plan. We have now put together a District Development Plan covering the next few years. Thanks to those who contributed to our Development Day or filled in the survey online. You can read all about the plan here. As you’ll see, Adult Recruitment is our number one priority for the rest of 2021.

Everyone can help. We all have a role to play in growing the number of adult volunteers – and we will all benefit too, with the load on the current volunteers being shared.

Here’s what YOU can do to help…

  • Don’t rush in: We have 6 months to work on this plan (of course adult recruitment will never stop but this concerted effort to replace the volunteers we’ve recently lost will last until December). Please don’t shove Adult Information Forms under people’s noses! They shouldn’t even see one of those until they’ve volunteered for a good few weeks and someone’s had a chat about which role is for them. Take your time!
  • Understand Flexible Volunteering: There are very few adults around in today’s world who will happily take on the role of Section Leader – planning the programme, running it, getting together all the required resources, keeping records and collecting money. Some of those reading this are doing this, and you’re amazing, but if we are to find more volunteers we need to share this load a bit. So instead of looking for your next Cub Scout Leader, what about looking for activity runners, programme planners and stuff getters? Watch this video to find out more.
  • Invite me to chat to your parents: I’ve now visited two Groups and spoken to parents about the above Flexible Volunteering method. At 1st Hope which was down to two or three Leaders, we now have enough adults to cover all three Sections. There’s still a lot of work to do but I’m very happy with the way Flexible Volunteering went down. If you’d like me to come and chat to your parents & carers let me know.
  • Have a recruitment plan: At your next Leaders meeting or Group Exec spend a bit of time putting together an adult recruitment plan. Write down what you would do if someone volunteered. Write down a timetable of what you’re going to do between now and December to recruit more adults. Let me know if you need help with this.
  • Have a retention plan: More important than recruitment is retention – we need to look after the volunteers we have. Number one for this is doing proper Adult Reviews. If you’ve not had a formal review with your line manager in the last 5 years, ask them for one. You should also have informal chats about how you’re getting on.
  • Have a succession plan: We need to avoid people being locked into roles which they no longer want to do because they’d feel guilty if they left and this had a detrimental effect. If potential volunteers see this happening they won’t volunteer because they won’t want to be in the same position in a few years time. Having a succession plan, someone in mind to take over when the time comes, stops this happening.
  • Share your “Why story”: Other adults are more likely to volunteer if they hear what makes you volunteer. Tell people what you get out of it and what your favourite bits of your role are.
  • Join one of the #GoodForYou workshops: These workshops run by the UK Regional Development Team are really interactive and cover the stages of adult recruitment from being ready to recruit to starting the new volunteer in their role. Each month a different aspect is covered and there are two or three of each workshop so if you miss one you can book another. Check the events pages of scouts.org.uk and look for the #GoodForYou recruitment workshops.

Join our project teams. While we’re concentrating on Adult Recruitment for the rest of the year, we will also be looking at Diversity, Young Adults and Accountability next year. In fact, each of these areas have adult recruitment aspects so we may be able to get cracking on this sooner than next year. I can’t do all this on my own, nor can Sue or any of the other members of the District Team – so if you’d like to join a small team looking at either Adult Recruitment, Diversity, Young Adults or Accountability, please get in touch for a chat.

That’s all for now!

Thanks for all you do.

Moz
District Commissioner
Scouts Wrexham

07779 272340
wrexhamscouts.org.uk
Facebook Twitter Instagram: @wrexhamscouts

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