Policy blog

The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) has joined forces with other leading third sector organisations to highlight concerns over the effect of Brexit on volunteering numbers. Alongside Volunteer Scotland, SCVO has prepared a letter to the Home Secretary Sajid... Read more

Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP Home Secretary Home Office 2 Marsham Street London SW1P 4DF 15 August 2018 Dear Home Secretary, The Contribution of Non-UK Citizen Volunteers The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) is the national membership organisation for Scotland’s... Read more

How can the sector most effectively engage with Scotland’s political parties to progress their policy proposals? SCVO decided to ask the experts by hosting a series of, ‘Meet the Researcher’, events for members of SCVO’s Policy Officers Network. At the events, members have the... Read more

The Scottish Government has recently published their updated plan to tackle smoking in Scotland – “Raising a Tobacco-free Generation: Our Tobacco-Control Action Plan 2018.” The Plan centres on the Scottish Government’s priority that, by 2034, an entire generation of Scottish... Read more

Gender pay gap of Scottish voluntary sector May 2018 Download the PDF - Gender pay gap briefing May2018 All organisations with 250+ staff were due to report on their gender pay gap by 4 April 2018. The UK Government has published the full data set of organisations submitting... Read more

Recent OSCR research found that good governance is one of the top things that promotes trust in charities. People want to see charities are being ‘run well’. They want to know that the money or time they choose to put into an organisation is well looked after. In fact they expect... Read more

A landmark report on the UK’s progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been published. ‘Measuring Up’, produced by UKSSD, paints a gloomy picture of the UK’s performance, whilst highlighting successes across the 17 SDGs that tackle issues from improving health... Read more

At this start of 2018, the third sector was rocked by a fall in public trust and damning headlines of unacceptable charity failures. In reality, public trust in charities is still high in Scotland - 73% of those questioned in an SCVO survey in November 2017 strongly or tended to... Read more

Concern for the environment has never been greater and the way we use our natural resources is firmly in the public spotlight. The concept of a circular economy is one way to minimise the strain on natural resources and help eradicate waste by keeping resources and products in... Read more

Nicola Sturgeon fields new team as transfer window closes For Scottish Politics fanciers (yes, that includes both you and I) the last 24 hours have felt like premiership transfer deadline day. With Twitter tuned to #ScotReshuffle and thumb over the refresh button, we were treated... Read more