I am delighted to be able to announce that the County has agreed terms with Online Scout Manager (OSM) to provide each section within the County with Gold level membership.

I know a large number of sections already use OSM to manage the running of their sections and have seen the great benefits it provides in terms of managing membership records, programme planning, badge records and so much more, saving leaders vast amounts of admin time whilst improving the experience for our Young People and adult volunteers.

We have put together some brief questions and answers to help those new to OSM get signed up – download these here.  If you’re already using OSM we would like you to register your section against the County membership, this will also ensure that your subscriptions automatically renew at the end of their current period at Gold level, for free.

All sections will need to put in a Birmingham County specific code which can be found in the attached document along with instructions of how to input the code.  The code has gone live so please login to OSM now!

We know that there is a great deal of rich functionality within OSM and to help you maximise the benefits for your section, we will shortly be offering some sessions for leaders to attend ranging from an initial taster session for people who may not have used the system before, to more focussed sessions showing people how to use some of the other functions that the system has to offer.  These sessions will initially be run by Nick Thomas and Alex Harverson but they are looking for support to help run local sessions at a district level.

If you have a good working knowledge and experience with OSM and would be interested in acting as a local champion and helping others within your District please contact Nick to offer your help– nick.thomas@birminghamscouts.org.uk.

A document explaining more about OSM and how to get started is available to download here.

​Andrew Lloyd

County Commissioner