Lessons from Campfire: 5 years of a digital home for a global movement

The World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) brings together around 11 million girl guides and girl scouts in 154 member organisations. Most of what they do happens away from screens. At the Open Social Summit '26, Paul Bigmore, COO of WAGGGS, and Robyn Gibbs, its digital lead, explained who their Open Social platform is actually for, and what five years of running it taught them.

A digital campfire for leaders and volunteers

Campfire is not built for the girls themselves. It is for the people who lead and support the movement: national leaders, global and regional volunteers, and adults taking part in WAGGGS events. Bringing them together in person would be impossible or very expensive. On Campfire they learn, share and work together, and it is increasingly the first place WAGGGS communicates with them.

WAGGGS committed to Open Social in April 2021 to replace an online learning platform and a volunteer management tool. A soft launch with about 200 people at its World Conference was followed by eight months of learning how they used the platform. The formal launch came in 2022. Today around 95% of member organisations take part, with about 2.400 members and on course for 100.000 public visitors this year.

Clear about who belongs

As the platform grew, WAGGGS became explicit about who it is for: senior leaders, volunteers and participants in specific events. Every member is endorsed by their member organisation, belongs to the volunteer pool or is staff, and about 70% of sign up requests are declined. This is part of WAGGGS' safeguarding commitment to girls and young women under 30, some of whom join global activities online for the first time. Members who stop logging in receive two reminders and are then removed, which keeps the community active.

Creative use of the platform

The team regularly uses features in ways they were not designed for. Its volunteer job board is built from events, tags and a dashboard. Web forms became a live voting tool for global meetings. The first large vote put the platform under real pressure, and Open Social improved the feature: today 300 people can vote in five minutes, using one form in four languages. Campfire runs in English, Spanish, French and Arabic, with machine translation and a team of volunteer translators who have their own role on the platform.

What takes time

The talk was open about what was hard. The original user guide did not help members find their way, so the team rewrote it. Senior leadership support took about 18 months to secure, and getting the site structure right took four years. After a year, only 8 member organisations had completed their profiles, so the team is now completing them from existing data and inviting organisations to correct them. The first community of practice that sustained itself took about 18 months to emerge.

What comes next

WAGGGS is introducing Salesforce as its CRM, for 35.000 to 40.000 contacts including donors and alumni, and is exploring how it will connect with Campfire. It is also making it easier for member organisations to share resources in an organised way, with clear permission and licensing so volunteers can reuse each other's work.

See it for yourself

If you run a network of organisations and want to see how this works in practice, request a demo.