Audience understanding with Scouts

Despite its ambition to be a national youth organisation ‘open to all’, Scouts found that less than 6% of its membership identifies with a minority ethnic group. We partnered with Scouts to explore how it can diversify membership and deliver a clear action plan for its Executive Leadership Team, Race Equity Board, staff and volunteers.

Identifying Black British communities as a focus area, we designed a methodology that enabled existing Black Scouts members to safely share their experiences, and prospective Scouts members to share what they would need to attract them to the organisation. After creating an empowering online community, we scaled our findings through a large quantitative survey study with both Black communities and a nationally representative sample.

Our research allowed Scouts to unearth fresh insight to understand perceptions, motivations and barriers to membership. The findings led to an accessible action plan that highlights ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ that will support Scouts in increasing awareness, engagement and uptake by Black British people. For clarity and transparency, the findings and plan were presented to key stakeholder groups across Scouts and have been enthusiastically adopted and hard-wired into day-to-day operations.

“The Unmistakables helped us deliver clear and unambiguous outcomes and supported us in the on-time delivery of the programme of work. They were responsive and open to challenge and keen to deliver with us. Lots of consultants say they work in partnership with the client – The Unmistakables actually delivered on this promise and were not afraid to challenge us where they needed more engagement from us to help them deliver on time and to budget. Our weekly catch-up and progress calls were a joy to be part of. Focused, on time and cheerful. I wish all consultants worked in this way.” – Simon Carter, Head of Media Relations, The Scouts Association