Amplifying our collective voice on Fair Funding

At SCVO, we have worked hard over the last few years, with our sector, to pull together our Fair Funding principles and asks, and to champion those within the Scottish Parliament. But as successful as that work has been thus far, we can still do much more by amplifying our calls right across Scotland's voluntary sector.

We’ve been hugely encouraged and appreciative that, over recent months, organisations such as the TSI Scotland Network, the ALLIANCE, the Scottish Sports Association, Volunteer Scotland, and the Poverty Alliance have echoed our Fair Funding calls in their own work. It has added greater support and legitimacy to not just the package of policy asks itself, but to the fact that the urgent need for Fair Funding is a view shared across the voluntary sector.

We want to provide as many voluntary organisations as possible with the information, tools, and resources they need to join that every-growing group of allies and supporters by highlighting the need for Fair Funding in their own work. On the new Fair Funding in Scotland section of our website, we’re providing an arsenal of resources to help you support our calls, be it within your own output and content, your influencing work at Parliament, or anywhere else you feel it would be beneficial.

We have outlined what Fair Funding is, both in terms of general principles and the specific asks we are making of the Scottish Government across all four strands of the Fair Funding package that we have developed in conjunction with voluntary organisations across Scotland. We have tracked all of the Scottish Government’s commitments of relevance to Fair Funding to date and will continue to do so, to ensure that we are able to hold the Government to account.

We’re collating and updating a whole host of useful facts and stats, from the Scottish Third Sector Tracker and beyond, that can help organisations evidence the need for Fair Funding. And we’re constantly developing suggested responses to some of the common concerns, questions, and pushbacks that we know are deployed when Fair Funding is called for.

We want to provide useful links and resources, beyond just our own, that give different perspectives on voluntary sector funding and the need for Fair Funding. And, after devising a number of case studies over the last couple of years of engagement with the voluntary sector on funding and its related issues, we’ve given some examples of those, to outline the reality of the current situation and inspire organisations to produce their own stories that detail how vital Fair Funding is for our sector.

Our Fair Funding calls are not the result of our own vision or views. They are, instead, the culmination of years of engagement, evidence collecting, and policy development directly involving the length and breadth of the voluntary sector in Scotland. Fair Funding, as a package of principles and asks, exists because SCVO has listened to the voices within our sector, hearing and reflecting not just the barriers and challenges faced, but the critical solutions identified.

Fair Funding exists as a set of these solutions because of the voices of Scotland’s voluntary sector – now let us amplify those voices as best we can, to ensure that Fair Funding is implemented by the Scottish Government, allowing our charities, voluntary groups, and social enterprises to thrive and provide greater security for our people and communities.