In January we sent out a survey to all Code Club volunteers past and present, and we were really grateful that 688 of you took the time to fill it in. Thanks!

The purpose of the survey was to find out how we could improve and make our valued volunteers as happy as they could be with our service.

20% of you who filled in the survey told us that you were no longer running a Code Club, so we asked why and this is what you told us:

The majority said it was a simple matter of not having time anymore, or of your circumstances changing – life happens! However, we thought more about this and agreed it would be good if we had some clearer steps to take if your circumstances do change. We’re working on a pack of resources to make it easy for you and the venue to find someone else to take over the club so the children can still attend.

15% of you said you didn’t get enough support from Code Club. We’re pleased as punch that the figure was so low, but we’d love to get that as close to 0% as humanly possible, so we’re going to look at more ways we can help.

For starters, we have a new Community Support Assistant starting in April, whose main focus will be to answer any questions you may have and solve any difficulties as quickly as possible.

We also asked, if you had stopped running a Code Club, if there was anything we could have done to persuade you to stay, and this was the response:

As you can see, you were keen to get more support in the local area and to have more events to connect with other volunteers.

Well, the good news is we are already making plans to help with this.

From April all regions will have a Coordinator working at least three days a week so they will be on hand to support you and run more events too. We’ll also continue to introduce more online events that everyone can join, like our monthly Twitter Chat.

Many of you said you were keen to get involved in competitions, so we will aim to introduce simple and fun competitions for the year ahead. We will also continue to promote Raspberry Pi competitions and develop special projects to increase the variety of activities you have available for your clubs.

We noted that some of you thought we could improve our communications and that volunteers needed more recognition. Both of these things are super important to us, so we’ll be coming up with lots of ways to address this.

Writing blogs responding to feedback is just one thing we are going to start doing more regularly, and we are also making sure that we have better communications specific to your local area with dedicated Twitter accounts and newsletters.

Finally, we can never thank Code Club volunteers enough for their dedication and commitment. Without you, there is no Code Club. So, thanks a million!

Feedback to give? We want to hear it! Drop us a line at hello@codeclub.org.uk