Scout groups not enough Volunteers

[girlfriend44]

Local Scout group has lots of children signed up but enough volunteers do in danger of closing.

Is this the same everywhere?
What stops people from volunteering?

@PuttingDownRoots We've recently opened a Squirrel Drey and it's boosted our Leaders and Exec Committee numbers significantly.

I absolutely love it, they're such fun.

Its 100% about attitude not time. If people want to do it, they will find a way to find the time.

We find that those people involved tend to be busy people. The joke is, if you want something done, find a busy person round our way!

I completely agree, @RedToothBrush I'm a serial volunteer - I've been a Cub Scout and Girl Scout leader, as well as a soccer and volleyball coach for my kids' activities. At the moment I'm a Sunday School assistant for the littles.

Put plainly, there are adults who can be arsed, and adults that can't. I also have three kids and a professional (demanding) full time job. Husband is self-employed and works around 65 hours a week. What you value, you do. What you value, you find time to do.

I volunteer because my kids get a lot out of the activities they do, and I know just how much effort and time the coaches/leaders put in. I have a strong sense of community and really feel that everyone should pitch in. It's also a crappy example to your kids if you are always one of the people who take but never give.

Also agree about the "whataboutery" on MN. Far too many people who think that they couldn't possibly contribute because of jobs, kids, etc. Newsflash: pretty much every parent volunteer has the same demands on their time. We just value giving back - so we do.

In the circles I run in, you can split people into "those who help" and those who come up with every reason why they couldn't possibly. Laziness. Apathy. Takers.

What about those of us who are disabled? Or have to move away?

It's not as simple as those who can be arsed and those who can't. Wise up.

There is always admin or other tasks volunteers can help out with.

How do I do that when I moved 30+ miles away?

Find another volunteer opportunity in the place you moved to?

And the vast, vast majority of people are not disabled.

I was a single parent.

I'm disabled.

I work(Ed) full time.

I studied part time.

I also continued with other volunteering, but we are discussing Scouts?

I'm talking more generally, but it applies to scouts.

Sorry maybe I'm picking you up wrong but are you saying I should've sought out a scout group to volunteer at in my new place?

My point is really pretty clear. You mentioned that couldn't volunteer because of a disability and you moved. You likely moved to somewhere there are volunteer opportunities- but my broader point is that most parents who choose not to volunteer are not doing so because of disabilities. They are doing so because they cannot be bothered.

But I kept up my volunteering, just not with scouts?? I kept on as much as I could cope with.

Using the Internet that you get MN on...

Well clearly if you are volunteering with other things you have other priorities which isn't scouting...

For a physical scout group?

I already do volunteer with other things that I did and do over the internet and I kept those on?

So you're clearly an adult who can be bothered. Far too many are not.

Same everywhere. I volunteer for Girlguiding, DH volunteers for Scouts. I don’t know of any groups within our county which aren’t crying out for more assistance, be that with admin, running units or events etc.

This is exactly how we push it now.

We deliberately do things to involve parents and to make it fun for them.

We've found that by doing activities that parents themselves would like to do as part of helping out they want to help out!!

The whole attitude of 'I can't do that because [insert excuse here]' tends to disappear if there is something in it for the adults.

I'd argue that we have more volunteers who are professionals who work long hours and commute further than the average group too.

We do have a strong community in our area so there is perhaps more of a mentality that goes with that, but there's also a lot of people who think their responsibilities end the second the leave the house and shove the kids off somewhere. They close the door at night and you don't see them in the evenings.

Its 100% down to whether people want to do things. People who want to, find a way or they will explain their situation and we are sympathetic if its more than 'oh I don't have time'. The time one is the cast iron bollocks excuse.

Throughout my kids life I’ve volunteered at whatever they were doing.

Playgroup had paid staff but was run by a committee and I was secretary. It was hard to get folk to volunteer on the committee but there was a dishwashing rota that everyone was on, and it worked well.

Spare pair of hands at primary school things, fine. The teachers took the responsibility, I was happy to make up the ratios.

Cycling proficiency - changed from being a spare pair of hands to running the whole thing, whereas before it had been the teacher and a specialist council worker with the police doing the test at the end. Was glad to give that up.

High School - secretary of PTA and helped out at Duke of Edinburgh expeditions.

my kids didn’t do too many extra curricular stuff but what they did do, I was happy to give lifts and such like to sports events etc.

But what I found was this.
Most folk have to be coerced into volunteering and usually do so when it’s obvious the group will fold if no-one steps in and begin to plan their escape immediately.
Everything takes up a lot more time than you realise.
Many things volunteers are being asked to do we’re once done by paid staff.
The bureaucracy is a suffocating nightmare.
There are always trouble makers who either do eff all but happy to complain, a lot or those who go on power trips and make life difficult for all the other volunteers.
For a couple of hours a week, you have to do so much training, it makes no sense.

Wow that's quite a thread to wade through, but I didn't want to skip anything. Sorry this is longer than I intended!

I'm an assistant Beaver Leader. I work F/T in a professional position. I'm the last person on the planet who thought they'd like working with small children.

I volunteered on odd weeks to begin with, usually when my Beaver DC had a hike, and because I like walking. When DC moved to Cubs, I volunteered to be a sectional assistant at Beavers which meant one weekend's basic training and a DBS, no uniform. 10 months later I was in uniform and am now nearly 7 years in the colony and I'm well north of 50. I'm likely autistic. I can't organise stuff easily. I used to say I couldn't bear dealing with loud groups of children, but mine turned out autistic and I figured if I could cope with 24 Beavers in an echoey hall I could cope with one stroppy DC. I was right.

What I didn't anticipate was how much it's helped my job. The need to be the adult in a situation and just Get On With It has bigger effects than just managing to survive an hour a week of small smurfs running about or learning to light fires or put up tents or cook. I find dealing with groups of recalcitrant adults at work fairly straightforward now and wish I'd joined Scouting years earlier. It was a case of making time to do it, and suddenly I had some. (Ok, sometimes I've changed into uniform in the disabled loo after only just getting back in time...)

I'm happy being assistant. I don't want the leader position because that might be a challenge too far, but because there's two of us working together we can take weeks off if necessary and plan around absences. As a PP said up thread, I can come up with ideas, and make sure we're covering badges, and I'm in it for the long haul. But it shows that if you can't or don't want to do the main leader stuff, you don't have to! Just helping on the outside stuff is great as that's where we need the ratios.

And once a group grows, then a good district leadership should make sure that help will be found. We've now got two of every section and at least two uniformed leaders per colony/pack/troop.

Stroppy DC is now an Explorer, and learning life and social skills there. I really wish I'd been able to be a scout when I was young but better late than never! And it is fun. But no way it is just an hour a week once you're in uniform!

Thank you. This is great news!

I'm the only leader in our Group who has children in the Group. Only requirement is passing DBS and completing stuff like your safeguarding training
in our group that wasn’t deemed necessary , hence why I left , although that was a number of years ago , hopefully things will have been tightened up by now .

@girlfriend44 you start some volume of weird threads.

(Not troll hunting, I mean a weird variety of question subjects and ponderings 😄)

Your Scouting journey (sorry for using that word!) sounds vaguely similar to mine. 6 years ago, my autistic DS was a Beaver. It was the only thing he could cope with doing outside of school, and he was making really good progress. So when the leader said she was going to retire, and that the Colony would close if they couldn't find someone to step forward, I thought that I'd give it a go - selfishly, as I wanted DS to stay in Scouting. I collared a couple of other parents and said that I'd do it if they did it with me! I'd never been in Scouts as a kid and had no idea what I was doing, but from somewhere I dredged up enough courage.

Spool forward to the present day. I am still there, a Beaver Scout Leader but now also an Assistant District Commissioner for Beavers. I absolutely love it. It's given me skills I never thought I'd have, and shown me that I have unexpected talents in organising fun and educational things for a bunch of kids to do. My confidence has grown both within and outside Scouting - when you've faced down a room full of 6-8 year olds who are about to go feral, very few workplace situations hold similar fear!

But. It is a big amount of work to do it well. (To do it badly would be fairly easy IMO.) It helps that I am shit hot at admin; I'm one of those weirdos who loves filling in forms and keeping nice neat records. I also work 0.8 FTE so I do have a bit more spare time than someone who works FT. Plus I have a very good team of Assistant Leaders who more than pitch in when needed. But the bulk of the thinking falls to me.

As to why people don't volunteer for Scouts specifically (as opposed to volunteering generally), I think some of it is feeling like you have to be a special kind of person to do it, and that you need to love working with kids. I certainly felt that way before I joined (and I didn't much like kids - especially other people's). Some of it will also be down to time constraints, childcare issues or physical limitations. And some of it, sad to say, is that some people CBA to volunteer, even if they were able to.

It's also worth remembering that behind each team of kid-facing Scout Leaders, there's another team of trustees who do things like manage the Scout Group finances, sort out the building maintenance if you have your own premises, head up fundraising initiatives, and generally ensure that the kid-facing volunteers can fulfil their roles. No child contact required! But it's often equally as difficult to find people willing to be Group trustees.

Sorry for the essay!

Its 100% about attitude not time. If people want to do it, they will find a way to find the time

I totally agree. Of course, there will always be a few who genuinely just can't help out for whatever reason, but there's usually a way around most things, including bringing younger children to the meeting if need be.

However, parent rotas are not too hard to get together, in my experience. Recruiting full time leaders is a whole other ball game. But saying that, I have 5 cub leaders and a parent assistant. They all have full time jobs, but still find time to help out most weeks (one does shifts, so does every other week).

We have 20 Scouts, 24 Cubs, 24 Beavers. So for a camp, that's 3 leaders for Beavers, 2 for Cubs, 1 for the Scouts and 1 in charge so technically we are in ratio

Sorry if I've misunderstood, but the ratios here are off. It's one adult for up to 6 beavers, one adult for up to 8 cubs, and one adult for up to 12 scouts. Plus a leader in charge.

So for a camp for 20 scouts, you'd need 2 adults, 24 cubs needs 3 adults and 24 beavers needs 3 adults. Plus the leader in charge. 9 adults in total