Engaging Scouts Leaders
Partnership with Curtin University and The University of Western Australia research team
Project members
Scouts research overview
Volunteer Recruitment, Retention & Engagement
to find ways to attract and retain more adult volunteers to deliver Scouts youth programs.Why have you committed to staying with Scouts Australia is important to us and with this understanding we hope to improve the retention of greater numbers of our leaders…
– Chris Bates, former Chief Commissioner Scouts Australia (Chiefy)
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​As Scouts organisations across the country would know, developing effective recruitment, training and retention strategies are essential for non-profit organisations to deliver quality youth programs. Non-profit organisations such as Scouts often struggle to attract and retain a sufficient number of volunteers, resulting youth who would like to become Scouts, but often find the experience challenging due to long wait lists. The key purpose of this partnership was to help Scouts find successful, innovative solutions to attract and engage volunteers who are crucial for delivering its youth programs and vision.
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Prof Marylène Gagné, Dr Patrick Dunlop, and Dr Djurre Holtrop from the Curtin Future of Work Institute and Dr Christine Soo from the UWA Business School, along with Professor John Cordery from Curtin University, provided their expertise to improve recruitment and retention at Scouts from 2016-2020.
Together with Scouts WA, Scouts SA, Scouts VIC and Scouts TAS, they have been awarded an impressive Australian Research Council Linkage Project Grant to try new state-of-the-art recruitment, training and communications strategies to improve the engagement and retention of Scouts volunteers.​