Our Membership, Growth and Retention Plan 2017-2018

Our Action Plan Encourage’ Next Step’ transition Improve Volunteer Recruitment/Presence of Girlguiding on the Isle of Wight Bring a Grown Up evenings

Priority Number One…… Over the last 12 months we have run several local transition events as part of unit meetings. Rainbows have visited Brownies Brownies have visited Guides & Guides have visited Rangers We’ve also had Rangers talking to various Leaders and have encouraged a number of girls to start their leadership journey.

Next step A number of Next Step transition days are being planned across the Island during the Spring term.

Our numbers…..

and what they tell us. We have a good number of Rainbows however we are looking to recruit more girls through being a visible presence at local events and by visiting primary schools. Brownies are recruited regardless of whether they have been to Rainbows but many girls finish Brownies before their 10th birthday. Our numbers then halve at transition from Brownies to Guides. More work needs to be done therefore to encourage this transition and many units are already working with local Brownie units to improve these numbers. Our Ranger numbers on the Island are very low and again Guide units are working on how we can encourage more girls to move up.

A better presence in the community and at events Action Number 2 College Freshers Week Improve Volunteer Recruitment A better presence in the community and at events Isle of Wight Day Riverfest Volunteers Fairs

Lots of interest and over 2000 Marshmallows given away! Isle of Wight Festival Lots of interest and over 2000 Marshmallows given away!

Social media was something we were VERY behind on. Girlguiding Isle of Wight public and members only pages launched in November 2017 We became ‘tweeters’ from November 2017 and have had many retweets from events attended both on and off the Island. @girlguidingiw We are also now on Instagram GirlguidingIOW Feel free to join us on any of our growing social media forums.

Some of our social media stats….. Since the launch of our public page we have grown and are continuing to grow. 25703 Number of total likes 100% Response rate Average response time, just 4 mins! 178 Current ‘Likers’ 185 Followers

199 Volunteers (200 by Christmas!) Volunteer Numbers 80 Enquiries since Nov 2017 199 Volunteers (200 by Christmas!) 16 Members currently working on ALQ 10 YLs working towards their YLQ

Action 3….. Bring A Grown Up Each Section will hold a volunteer recruitment event in their local area. Units will be asked to include a Bring a Grown Up event as part of their Spring term planning. Units have included Bring a Grown evenings as an introduction to the new programme and several parents have volunteered to help on an occasional basis. We will continue to be a presence at volunteer events across the Island and at events throughout the year.

Other things we are trying…. Businesses contacted Library Posters Advertisements in local paper Regular Local Media contact Social media advertisements Promotional material in staff rooms. Adverts on volunteer website via Community Action IW Networking with other voluntary groups via Community Action IW Contact with local bus company re adverts on buses Invitations to prospective volunteers to local events Encourage quicker responses to enquiries