We know Fair Funding is needed – help us highlight why

Fair Funding means a funding landscape that is fair, flexible, sustainable and accessible. It includes longer-term funding, unrestricted funding, timely payments, processes that are easier to navigate, funding that keeps pace with rising costs, and proportionate reporting requirements.

And in the last few years, SCVO’s Fair Funding work has made solid progress. From featuring as the Social Justice and Social Security Committee’s primary topic of pre-budget scrutiny in 2025-26, to our asks being included by the Community Planning Improvement Board in its Guidance for Fair Funding for the Voluntary Sector, Fair Funding has been endorsed both inside and outwith parliament.

And yet, there are perhaps two key milestones of recent years:

Firstly, is the Scottish Government’s commitment to Fairer Funding, a direct response to our Fair Funding work. And, although Fairer Funding does not yet go nearly far enough, such a commitment must be recognised as a welcome step in the right direction.

Secondly, and perhaps most strikingly, has been the organic, grassroots swell of support for Fair Funding across the voluntary sector. Our asks have been included in the manifestos of voluntary organisations and charities across Scotland, organisations who have lobbied the government for Fair Funding in their own influencing work. A movement has built up around Fair Funding that has ensured that it is now part of the narrative, part of the ongoing debate, not just within the walls of Holyrood but right across Scotland.

Scotland’s voluntary sector is at the heart of our communities, supporting people, delivering services, tackling inequality and driving positive change. Yet many organisations continue to face uncertainty because of short-term, restrictive and unsustainable funding.

There is no policy area or sector that voluntary organisations or charities do not touch, either directly or indirectly. And within each of those areas, the support and services provided by our sector are invaluable. If we continue on the path that we are currently on, with the only recognisable improvements to funding being slow and slight, then challenges will persist, if not increase, in all of these areas – from health and social care to human rights and advocacy, from tackling the climate emergency to eradicating child poverty, and everything in between.

That is why we have sought to build awareness of the current situation facing the sector in our new resource: Fair Funding in Scotland.

By working with valued partners across the sector and beyond, this new, consistently growing work highlights the impact of current funding practices across a wide range of policy areas and sectors, while amplifying the voices of organisations experiencing these challenges every day. The resource also showcases the growing support for Fair Funding from organisations across Scotland and demonstrates why progress on this issue matters for communities, public services and the people who rely on them.

Our sector is not some homogenous blob. It is an array of incredible organisations and dedicated individuals, without whom no government priority can be achieved or portfolio can be successful, working across an inexhaustive number of areas and providing the services and support that our communities cannot go without.

In the coming months we will work with more and more organisations to keep adding additional policy areas within which our essential sector is crucial. Because that list is inexhaustive: there is no area that the voluntary sector does not play a role in, which is exactly why our sector – and Fair Funding – is so essential.

Please help us continue the momentum by engaging with and sharing this new piece of work. And if you want to get involved in helping us to expand it, particularly if your area of work or expertise is yet to be added, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Finally, a huge thank you to all of those across the sector who have contributed to this resource so far, will do so in the future, and to those who have supported our calls in any way over these past few years – your support has been indispensable in putting Fair Funding loudly and clearly on the agenda.