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 Mansfield Traquair Centre, 15 Mansfield Place, Edinburgh EH3 6BB.
Recovering from lockdown- guidance to guide us
As lockdown eases, we are all having to take responsibility. The advice we are following is increasingly nuanced, and our personal feelings about risk and rules are being exposed.
Some of us are happy to book holidays abroad and cross our fingers that they won’t be cancelled. Others have felt safe during lockdown and find the prospect of things opening up again pretty terrifying.
In our roles as paid staff or trustees of organisations, we are having to make decisions about risk that impact on other people. And could be the difference between an organisation surviving or folding.
These are hard times.
I’ve been coordinating the SCVO Coronavirus Third Sector Information Hub throughout the crisis, and we’ve just refreshed the content to try and reflect this move from crisis to recovery.
We have worked hard to strike a difficult balance with the hub, making sure it is comprehensive enough to help the majority of voluntary organisations. But not going into so much detail that it becomes unmanageable.
I hope we have toed this line well. Our stats and user feedback to date suggest we’ve been pretty effective- visits to the support section of SCVO’s website are up by a crazy 1500%.
We have worked in an agile way, and done our best to follow good content design principles, only including information that meets these criteria:
- Reflect a user need
- Add value
- Don’t duplicate
- Use plain English
- Relevant to national Scottish voluntary organisations
With lockdown easing we’ve updated the hub with new information that will help organisations work through the difficult decisions that now need to be taken.
As well as our lockdown guide, we hope that the silver linings we’ve glimpsed during lockdown won’t be lost. Our guides to working remotely and running digital services can help organisations to reflect on what has worked well, and plan to keep the best bits in the future.
We’re also encouraging all organisations to join the #NeverMoreNeeded campaign. The sector needs to keep reminding government, funders, donors and the general public of how essential our work is, now and in the future.
Please take a look and let us know if the content is still offering added value. If you think there’s a big gap I’d love to chat to you and learn more about what you need from us - find me on Twitter @Betty_Murphy or drop me an email.
