The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations is the membership organisation for Scotland's charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises. Charity registered in Scotland SC003558. Registered office Caledonian Exchange, 19A Canning Street, Edinburgh EH3 8EG.
The role of intermediaries
Yet, the majority of current funding practices undermine this role. Short-term project-restricted funding constrains strategic planning, late decisions create operational uncertainty, and insufficient core, flexible investment undermines workforce sustainability. While steps towards multi-year commitments are welcome, they remain inconsistent and under resourcing continues to limit the impact intermediaries can achieve on behalf of their members and communities.
A genuine shift to fair funding is necessary. Multi-year settlements, realistic inflationary uplifts, and proportionate accountability would provide the stability for long-term change. Predictable funding would enable intermediaries to invest in people, deepen partnerships, and contribute consistently to policy development rather than reacting to short-term pressures.
Without meaningful reform, the risk is to weaken the very infrastructure that enables community voice and democratic participation. Continued instability will reduce coordination, drive out expertise, and narrow community representation in national decision-making. The consequences of which would be felt most acutely in the communities already facing the greatest challenges.
SCVO’s Fair Funding campaign directly reflects these concerns. It calls for multi-year settlements, proportionate reporting, and respectful funding relationships, which mirror the needs expressed by Scottish Community Alliance. Together we are clear, sustainable community impact requires sustainable investment in the infrastructure that supports it.
The implementation of Fair Funding across the Scottish voluntary sector would bring significant benefits
Intermediaries - also often called umbrella bodies, membership bodies, or network bodies - are the voluntary sector organisations whose members are primarily other voluntary sector organisations that share a common interest or purpose. These national organisations support, connect, and represent others working in the same field, such as youth work, arts, health or heritage, directly reaching thousands of members and indirectly supporting thousands more organisations and individuals across Scotland.
Working with and on behalf of their members, such organisations help to build capacity, support with development, advocate for policy change, and, ultimately, increase the positive impact of Scotland’s voluntary sector. The work of intermediaries in any given field is, in short, invaluable.
However, just like the thousands of members they represent, intermediaries are not protected from the impacts of an unfair, unsustainable funding landscape. Intermediaries and their members alike often find themselves facing the same difficulties, including challenges with recruiting staff and providing services.
“Much of the funding available to organisations in Scotland is allocated on a short-term or annual basis,” outlines a national membership and development organisation for Scotland’s library and information sector. “Research into Fair Funding in Scotland has highlighted how this can create uncertainty for organisations in the public and third sectors, making it more difficult to plan strategically, retain staff, and invest in long-term development.”
“Some years we only deliver services at the optimum level for six months,” says a national network of organisations tackling the climate crisis. “This is because we don’t hear about funding for three months into the financial year and then it can take three months to recruit – without taking into account onboarding time.”
“Multi-year funding is never available and every year we are in a position where we don’t know how many of our team we can keep on beyond March,” adds an intermediary organisation providing much needed support to third sector groups across Scotland delivering on fuel poverty projects. “This is very unsettling, creates a lot of stress and uncertainty, and we lose good staff because of it.”
The benefits of Fair Funding are obvious, particularly to membership organisations who understand fully the issues facing those members.
“The implementation of Fair Funding across the Scottish voluntary sector would bring significant benefits to our organisation and to the wider library and information sector we support,” says the library and information sector intermediary. “Fair Funding encourages funders to support fair pay, including the Real Living Wage and pay progression comparable with the public sector. This would help organisations recruit and retain skilled staff, strengthen organisational expertise, and ensure staff delivering public services feel valued and supported.”
“It would mean we could attract and retain a stronger team and deliver more strategic outcomes,” adds the circular economy charities membership body.
Lack of multi-year – a relentless, never-ending process (anonymised)
With funding from the Scottish Government, local authorities, and numerous other funders, Organisation B is a national intermediary organisation that, from the outside looking in, could appear to have a solid funding foundation. However, the funding landscape for the voluntary sector is such that the organisation still faces a myriad of struggles – particularly with a lack of flexible, multi-year funding.
With a need to submit proposals on an annual basis, even for programmes with outcomes that are a strong priority of funders, there is a huge drain of time and resources. For a lengthy period of each year, Organisation B’s senior management team must devote a sizeable portion of capacity towards sourcing funding ahead of the following year, taking valuable staff members away from programme management, staff development, and strategic planning. A lack of flexible funding simply compounds these issues, with a need to seek out specific pots of cash to cover the core costs of the organisation making the entire process relentless and seemingly never-ending.
Essentially, Organisation B cannot help but face continuous barriers when seeking to provide its services, helping people through programmes and working with local organisations and communities while faced with uncertainties around the length of financial support. This has, at times, even led to the offering of voluntary redundancies, as the organisation has sought to cut capacity out of necessity. With local authority contracts in particular, the lack of multi-year funding on offer – and the subsequent ongoing uncertainty – is a major issue. In addition, the disproportionate time and hugely complex processes involved in the bidding for contracts, with more hoops to jump through once awarded, means that, on balance, it is often not worth the effort for the organisation in the first place.
Being able to rely on multi-year, flexible funding would be a game-changer for Organisation B, providing the space to plan and sound out the most effective ways in which to produce the best outcomes possible, instead of spending huge amounts of time just trying to source enough funding to survive, and helping to avoid the kinds of challenges that have, in the past, led to valuable staff members losing their roles.