Finding Troop Co-Leaders and Volunteers
Finding a Co-Leader
As a troop leader, you have a lot on your plate so having a troop co-leader and/or volunteers can be helpful for a few reasons. Having a co-leader on your team helps you divide and conquer and doesn’t put all of the workload on one person. You’ll always need at least two unrelated adults at each troop meeting, so having a second adult helping you lead the meetings will help you meet safety ratios. Plus, co-leaders bring different skills and expertise to the table. These differences will help you decide who should do what. Perhaps one leader can take charge of leading field trips while another leader could handle logistics and communication for troop meetings! Planning troop meetings, communicating with families, and being amazing mentors for your troop gets easier when you get a co-leader on board!
Where can you find a co-leader? There are a few ways! If Girl Scouts have joined your troop, you can hold a family meeting and ask for family volunteers. Be clear in your expectations of what a co-leader will be doing in your troop. Being transparent and specific helps you find the right fit! However, your co-leader doesn’t have to be a parent or guardian of one of the Girl Scouts in your troop. You can ask a friend, neighbor, or family member to be your co-leader if you think they would make a great leader for your troop! Troop leaders (and other troop volunteers) do not have to identify as female to help out with troop activities. You can also post on social media using sample posts created by GSRV! Best of all, when your co-leader signs up to lead a new troop, their membership is free and so is a membership for one new Girl Scout.
Once you’ve found a co-leader, it’s time to figure out how you work together, manage conflict, and foster a healthy relationship. Whether you’ve known your co-leader for years, or you two just met to get your troop off the ground, working with someone in a new capacity, like troop leading, can shift the dynamics of even the longest relationships. First, you may want to take some time to get to know each other! What are their hobbies? Do they have experience with Girl Scouts? What type of time commitments do they have outside of Girl Scouts? Next, you’ll want to cover some important topics that will help you build a great working relationship. We recommend discussing things like communication styles, division of labor, and what you want your troop’s experience to look like. Are you splitting duties 50/50? If not and one person is taking on more responsibilities than the other, are you both okay with that arrangement? Remember that this can and should be an ongoing process—if a few months into your year you decide that you’d like to step back a little, or your co-leader would like to play a bigger part in the troop leading, re-evaluate and re-define. You can use our co-leader conversation guide as a starting point to get to know your co-leader.
You should revisit these topics often as your troop, personal lives, and availabilities change. Communication is key! Scheduling regular check-ins can help you remember to check in about how things are going. Use this opportunity not just to hash out troop meeting details, but also to find out how you’re both doing. Share recent challenges, questions, and anything else that’s happening in your life that might have an impact on your role as co-leader. Having these regular check-ins builds in set times throughout the year for you and your co-leader to take a breather to listen and offer support and guidance to each other. This also prevents issues from being pushed to the back burner and potentially snowballing into bigger problems. During these check-ins, don’t forget to celebrate your wins!
The relationship between co-leaders is not only important to the experience of the troop, but also to your experience as a volunteer! Your relationship is an investment—as co-leaders, you’ll build from one another’s strengths, share in the fun, and learn from each other’s perspectives, so take some time to put these tips into place because they’ll pay off in the long run!
What if you have individuals who would like to volunteer with the troop but don’t want to commit to being a co-leader? That’s still great! You shouldn’t have to do everything alone. While you do have to have a minimum of two adults at every meeting, having a few extra hands available to help you run a meeting can help tremendously. Below are a few tips for finding troop volunteers (or a co-leader).
Finding Volunteers
Tip #1: Reach Out to Your Troop Families 
Tip #2: Ask a Friend
Tip #3: Connect with Alums
Tip #4: Tap Into the Power of Social Media
Tip #5: Ask the Experts
