New Girlguiding Programme, Subs and A lack of funds - Rainbows, Brownies, Guides

[IceRebel]

Is anyone else struggling with the cost of the new programme? I would be interested to find out what other units charge as subs, as we're struggling with having to pay out for the new materials, as well as balancing the costs of the activities we provide. As far as I can see there isn't an online / paperless version, which would really help as finances are quite tight. Is it just our unit or are others out there struggling as well?

Also, if you've ever thought about volunteering your time any local units would love to have you, so please do ask. I've never known it to be so difficult to get adult volunteers, we have such long waiting lists but are unable to accept more girls without additional help.

We have just increased our subs from £20 to £25 per term. I took over a unit last year with 2 other parents, and the activities we want to do cost more than the activities they used to do. Plus we've had to buy the new resources. We're asking the parents to contribute £5 to the badge book as well, but that is optional as not all brownies will want to do the badges at home, and some could borrow their friend's if they did want to do a badge.

We have bought all the new resources we might need, but have so far paid for them ourselves and are hopefully going to use gift aid money to pay us back. The unit haven't claimed gift aid for a few years, so when we can finally claim it (we are waiting for confirmation about changing the named person who can apply) we should get a reasonable amount.

Our church don't charge us much for rent though, which is why we can still function on low subs. My mum's brownies are in a hall that has upped the rent by a lot, so they've had to increase the subs by a lot too, which is difficult for them.

We're definitely holding off until after the census, then like you we'll assess the finances and choose parts we know our girls will enjoy the most.

I'm liking the idea of asking for a contribution to the books for those who want to do badges at home. Although we'll get 1 or 2 to lend out to those who just don't have the funds to afford them.

Rent does seems to be an ever increasing cost, and it really does affect the subs we have to charge.

Our local unit leaders tend to do their own fundraising and sponsorships for the unit (walks etc) and that’s helped the girls with things in the past, I imagine this time it will be for the new programme

I feel dreadfully sorry for the generation of leaders who are totally done with Guiding and the new programme was the last straw.

Remember this is just the transitional period and there’s no rush to move over just yet.

If you aren’t claiming gift aid, do it, and you can backdate 4 years too. Claim local grants. If you aren’t in England, register as a charity with the help of your county/HQ and then claim gift aid and look out for grant opportunities

Both my DDs are guides and the subs are £30 per term each plus an annual charge of £20 for hall hire.

I'm more than happy to pay this as their leader is absolutely fantastic (and yes, we do all tell her she is!)

Guides is on a Friday evening and my DDs love it, it's a fun way to end the week. They've done horse riding, ice skating, kayaking on the Thames along with other 'crafty' things. There's an extra charge for some activities but it's well worth it.

I really can't praise our Guide leader & her helpers enough.

Flamingo, the leaders sound very impressive, sponsorship and walks to raise funds. However, I can't help but feel as volunteers it shouldn't always fall on them to fund raise, especially when some of the resources could easily be made available online such as the badges.

Gift aid is already covered for our unit, but it's a timely reminder to other units, and the funds really do help. As for the local grants, it's definitely something i'm going to look into doing.

I'm a relatively new Rainbow leader and i have to say i think its been handled badly and i think its awful that they have rolled it all out and expect us to magic up money to buy the new stuff.

i am cheating a wee bit. i have bought the first skill builder activity cards but in terms of the badge book i have bought one for me and i will photocopy/type up the requirements for the interest badges.

having said that from the brief look through the activities though it seems like most of them are relatively cheap to run, and a bit repetitive and boring.

i am planning on roughly following the given activities but throwing in a few better but still on topic activities which will count towards the badge. we will also be doing most of the interest badge in unit meetings.

for uniform we only ask them to wear the polo and we have the tabards to sew badges on.

i'm working on the basis that no-one actually checks what i'm doing so as long as the girls are having fun i will keep on my way!!

we charge £25 per term

to add - we do one big sponsor event each year to raise funds, and our rent is only £10 per week.

I was also wondering about doing interest badges in meetings. I know you're not supposed to but lots of my girls are too busy with other activities / school, have no parental support, or just don't want to do badges outside of our weekly meetings. I would hate for them to miss out on badges because of their home lives, or even lack of funds to buy the badge book.

Does anyone know why we're not allowed to do interest badges in meetings anymore, or is there even a reason against it?

i basically model a lot of what i do off the local beaver unit which my DS has been through, it works really well and all boys get their 'bronze award' (equivalent of the new gold award) by the end of their time.

so i will be doing one theme badge, two of the three activities for an interest badge and assorted other activities over the term. i am asking one interest badge activity to be completed at home per term. so in the two years of rainbows they should achieve their gold award.

let be honest, the girls love getting badges! their little faces light up when they get that recognition of having earnt something. and if i have to fudge things slightly to do that for them i will.

the unit was in such a state when i took over so quite clearly nobody checks in on what we are doing. My girls will be happy and will be doing plenty of different activities which is all that matters to me.

My DD's Guides is £35 a term but there are no other costs apart from camps, weekend day trips and uniform (just the top, although they nearly all have the hoody too). For trips on meeting nights eg kayaking, dry ski slope we pay a deposit which is returned afterwards but forfeited if you don't show, Guides have to be transported to venues by parents. They do Gift Aid.

My son's Scouts also charge £35 a term but you do pay extra (maybe £3-£5) for kayaking etc. They also do Gift Aid.

All in all both are very reasonable. Both are desperate for new leaders / volunteers and struggle with this.

Our unit asks parents to pay £10 a month all year - this covers the costs of materials, room hire and we usually do a trip out/activity once every half term with this. Camps cost extra. We're about to put up the joining fee to £20 for new joiners from January to cover the cost of the handbook/badge book/necker and badge.
We've done quite well in getting extra funding from places like the local Parish Council, the Rotary Club have been brilliant and I think we got some money last year from a Police grant too.
You don't need to get all the levels of the themes - they show all of the items required on each level.
Our unit is busy and well attended and parents seem happy to pay the level requested.

Placemarking. Too busy to read now. Will come back to this.

My Guide unit charges £30 a term subs (parents pay census on top). DD's Brownies charge £35 subs this term and a £20 joining fee which covers the cost of the books etc (I don't know whether I have to pay seperately for her census yet, if so I might have to leave when I have 2 DDs in Guiding because I won't be able to afford 3 lots of census!). Our new Guides pay for their handbook and badge book. We haven't decided yet what we will do about the guides who paid for a GFile and old badge book when they started. We can't ask the parents to pay again now that those books are obsolete and irrelevant but we can't afford to buy them all new books as a unit. Someone asked earlier about what is the minimum amount of uniform needed - we say they need a t-shirt at least, some get hoodies etc as well and Guides don't have uniform trousers. I don't think DD's Brownies specified. I wish we hadn't got the Brownies trousers because the quality is rubbish and they were long enough to fit me.

We insist on the t shirt which is about £12 but other than that we are pretty slack on uniform, as long as they have no rips in their jeans and sensible shoes we don't worry.

Trips out are extra but rarely a fortune, we did the big bang event at NEC last year and it cost £7/girl for transport. We do swimming occasionally which is £2.50 per girl and we have done kayaking and bowling Inn the past but our current girls haven't been that bothered. We did charge £3 /girl for zumba but we had to hire an external instructor for it. But every single girl joined in, our 2 who have dyspraxia loved it and really did well.

However we do lots of crafts, cooking badges etc which subs cover and we did an evening of cocktails at the end of the summer term where we had a friend of mine who is a professional cocktail waitress come in. She did some amazing drinks with the kids, taught them how to shake them, how to toss the bottles etc - that came out of funds. The girls loved it!

We have offered the girls big gig at Wembley in October. Due to how far away we live it is costing £60 per girl which we cannot afford to fund. We are taking 14/25 girls but the 3 leaders going are providing custom designed tops to wear not out of funds.

My unit is increasing subs from £25 a term to £30 from January. And we don't pay any rent to the church for the use of their hall every week. Of we were paying rent, it'd be £40 a term min.

The grant came from the local council - try asking your local councillor (of the area where you meet) if anything is available, or hunt on the council website. They tend to be for projects, ours is specifically to cover new programme costs.

Scouting has been £30 a term for ages, it's rising to £35 this term. I help out as a parent at my son's Cub pack regularly as well as running Rainbows and pitching in to cover Brownies and Guides as required (eldest is a Guide), it'd be much easier with more parents on board.

For Brownies, we pay £6 a month all year except August. We pay extra for things like the activity day (£4). No requirement for uniform although DD wears one, some kids just wear the hoodie or t-shirt, some wear their own clothes. No mention of anything new or any increase in price.

TBH, DD loves it, comes home with bits she’s made and occasional badges. I would pay more if asked.

Is it normal to have a joining fee? ours doesnt have one/didnt have one when i took over - i assume this only applies if you are going to provide the badge book out of that money?

I'm surprised that books are still needed, I thought that would all be online. My child doesn't have any for Scouts, I think the leaders keep track on Online Scout Manager?

@IceRebel I texted Tawny and she says they are waiting for their gift aid claim to come in and then they will see how much money they have to play with and if they need to ask us for a donation.
We are lucky to be in a fairly affluent area so most parents will be able to pay, allowing the leaders to pay for those for whose families can't afford to.

It's very interesting to see the difference in unit subs, I have no idea how some units run with such little costs. £6 a month is just £1.50 a session, that seems crazy low when taking into account census, resources and rent.

@NannyOldElf We don't currently have a joining fee, but give the girls a badge book /handbook when they enroll. Obviously this is going to be pretty costly with the new programme. So we may look into this, although with some siblings coming up soon I can already foresee parent complaints. However, it might be that we have to take the leap, even if it means losing some girls.

Another idea from here is asking parents / guardians who have a skill / talent to help for night. (like the cocktail event) I'm sure we must have a few who could lend a hand and provide an different activity for a low cost.

Also i'll definitely look into grants, anything to help cover some of the costs would be a welcome relief.

@Cachailleacha hHaha you must be joking, Scouts have common sense. The only badge information they have online is for the rangers. Apparently they consulted with loads of people and found that Rainbows, Brownies and Guides didn't always have access to the internet. So instead of offer it both online and in book form, they just have books. Which you need to buy
£6 for Rainbows
£7 for Brownies
£8 for Guides

@Zeeboo, thanks for getting back in touch. I hope the gift aid money covers it. I have to admit I do worry about the girls who can't afford it. We currently gift the badge book / handbook and only ask for our girls to wear a t-shirt, and often have spares for girls who have moved up, so we can always work something out for those on lower incomes.

We’re only giving the badge books, and having a few reference copies of the handbook for now, particularly for existing girls.

To be honest, I’m quite happy with the move back to books. We constantly had parents asking where they could get a badge book, but very few seemed to go online to get the info.

Rent seems to be the biggest difference for most units when it comes to costs. I’m involved in two units, ones rent is extortionate, one barely pays any.

My daughter’s subs are £26/term and they’ve asked us to contribute an extra £5 to cover the cost of the badge book.
I know the leader well and know the subs don’t even cover the cost of the hall hire so I don’t mind paying the extra.

Our brownie subs are £30 per term, but there tends to be a lot of extras. I've just been informed of various trips over this term and the next which will cost another £100 on top of subs.

DD won't be doing all of it.

My personal preference would be to pay more in subs so that all of the badge related trips were included, as I find it easier to plan.

I'm not sure if we will continue with guides or switch to an activity that's more directed to DDs interests.

We pay £100 for the year. This is an all in fee and includes the contribution to central funds as well as the local unit costs. We are generally not asked for any extra money during the year except when the girls are doing an activity away from the hall (once a year usually). I have boys in Scouts and the subscriptions are the same.

The guides my daughter goes to has their own hall, used by all groups in the unit and also hired out to other groups during the day.

Now is a good time to apply for grants from local town/parish councils BTW.