We’re here for you and what you value: an update on SCVO’s membership review

I saw this quote the other day, a good wee mantra to have just now… "We may be stuck here for a little while, but adventures are coming and more reasons to smile."

Our members and the fantastic support they are offering across Scotland right now is certainly giving us lots of reasons to smile, and we hope our membership review will also be another - we want to make sure that we continue to value our members and can be considered valuable by them.

The insights and intelligence members have shared with us has meant we can start reviewing and responding to members’ needs. We have taken on board what members have told us about access to funding information and support being, as you would imagine, one of the things valued most. 

We are therefore currently trialling a new approach, offering free access to Funding Scotland Premium for newly joined members to help manage their funding.  Depending on the uptake, we hope this is something that we can offer all members later in the summer. 

Our engagement activities for the review had been postponed to enable organisations to focus on supporting our communities, and we are now instead planning to hold events online for members over the coming months. We’ll be sharing details of this through our membership bulletins, and we’ll build opportunities for conversations about the review into any wider interactions members have with SCVO.

What our members use, need and value continues to be the focus of our membership review, working towards it being concluded at the end of this year.  So the focus, or should I say the 'what' of the review, will stay the same, but the 'how' we do it will have to adapt. 

I had been undertaking lots of member review specific engagement – calls, meetings, chats - to hear about what matters to members, to inform our membership offer.  We know our members value being part of an organisation which represents them, being part of a vibrant voluntary sector community and hearing about particular services.

It’s been so lovely to have so many new and re-joined members becoming part of SCVO at this time, and hear what matters to them. I think that is testament to the community we are and what we offer as a membership organisation. One member told us: "We are all very grateful for the work SCVO has put in...I’ve signed us up as an SCVO member, should have done so long ago… my trustees now understand why SCVO is so important."

We’ve also had lots of great insights shared through the engagement we’ve been able to do so far and our survey which is still open for anything you want to tell us.

We are here for our members and we are always happy to receive feedback to help inform our membership review. If you have any ideas or would like to be involved, please get in touch for a chat! Simply email me at sarah.currie@scvo.scot or call 0131 474 8043.