Support & learning blog

Our recent DigiShift zoom was packed with insights and inspiration from charity professionals working with children and young people. This blog pulls together ten great examples of organisations delivering digital services that you can learn from. Barnardo’s - WhatsApp as a tool... Read more

Everything seems to have changed so quickly in the last month, but some things are still the same and there is one section of society who seem to be having the time of their lives – the scammers, fraudsters and cyber-criminal fraternity. Never knowingly missing the opportunity to... Read more

Siobhan Mercer reflects on the insights and inspiration from an Ask Me Anything DigiShift session with the renowned Beth Kanter. The topics covered were virtual meetings, managing remote teams, and maintaining connection and wellbeing while social distancing. Have you ever... Read more

Govan Housing Association has been running a diverse range of Digital Inclusion projects for the last 4 years; however, with the rise of Coronavirus and the lock down that followed, we faced several challenges in continuing to deliver our Community Inclusion programme. To that... Read more

For the past 12 months, we’ve been working with 29 social housing organisations across Scotland to build a network of Digital Champions supporting tenants across the social housing sector. The impact of the project which aimed to embed digital inclusion within housing front-line... Read more

It’s hard to think of any event in recent times that’s galvanised change the way the coronavirus pandemic has. As a society we’ve adapted the way we access services and interact with one another. We’ve seen service delivery models move to digital platforms to enable continued... Read more

At SCVO we support lots of charities to grow their digital capability. As a team we work between Edinburgh, Inverness and Glasgow so we already work remotely as part of our day-to-day practice. But for a lot of charities, working remotely at short notice might be a bit more... Read more

Since joining the Digital Champions in Housing Network with SCVO, staff at Langstane Housing Association have made a huge effort to advertise the new service being offered, and it has paid off. We advertised using our social media page and website, issued a press release... Read more

Like many who attended The Gathering on 19 - 20 February 2020 at the SEC in Glasgow, I’m still digesting all the learning, interesting conversations and following up with lots of the great new contacts I met. I had a prime spot over the two days that allowed me to experience this... Read more

Castlehill Housing Association launched their tenant led digital inclusion activities on 20th February 2020. Digital Motivator, Catherine Coutts, Tenant Participation Officer, and Digital Champion who is also a tenant, Ken Wilcox, tell us more. What digital inclusion activities... Read more

SCVO launched The Catalyst, a ground-breaking initiative to support thousands of charities to make use of digital at The Gathering Read more

Irene Mackintosh, Mhor Collective @irenewarnermack, PhD Student at the University of the West of Scotland It’s always exciting when a new report comes out (or it is to me, but maybe I’m weird), with new statistics to pour over and thoughts to think, and so I was looking forward... Read more

Orkney Housing Association has been an active member of the Digital Champions in Housing project; working to embed digital skills support into our day to day interactions between front-line staff and tenants, helping them to benefit from being online. One example of this embedded... Read more

I have been aspiring for years to bring Orkney Housing Association into the 21st century and undertake everyday tasks more digitally. It got me thinking, how much post do I receive through my own letterbox each week? Answer – hardly any! I receive text reminders for dentist... Read more

At SCVO Digital, we’ve encouraged lots of charities to make more use of ‘flexible technology’. But what on earth is it, and how can it help charities work more effectively? First of all, it’s not about foldable phones, which are not much use to anyone at the moment. What we mean... Read more

There’s nothing like the turn of a decade to prompt you to step back and look at longer-term changes. The pace of digital change is notoriously fast, and getting faster. What does this mean over the longer term? And why is 2020 particularly important? Looking at the last 20 years... Read more

It seems that every week brings news of a different cyber attack – including those that impact our lives at individuals. (I am writing this on the week of the Travelex attack, when I had a friend travelling who’s only mention of payment was via the Travelex system). Cyber... Read more

In Scotland, 43% of the workforce are lacking in Essential Digital Skills. Although this is slightly ahead of the UK average (53%) we still need to improve. People who don’t have these skills are more likely to be older, female, be a part-time worker, have a disability or be... Read more

“We don’t build houses, we build communities” That’s what one of our Digital Motivators said to me at a meet-up this week. What’s a Digital Motivator? Good question! Earlier this year we started a new project working with the social housing sector in Scotland. This project felt... Read more

True confession time – as you would expect from someone working in the field of cybersecurity, I find the whole “industry” a fascinating minefield – the slightly shady criminal aspects, the big talk of nation state threats to critical national infrastructure, even what can be... Read more

‘Your answer to someone else’s problem is not the solution.’ The statement above was the statement that opened the ‘Scottish Government service design champion training’ that I attended last year. As a sector, more than ever in 2020 we need to ensure that our services are fit for... Read more

2020 is the Chinese year of the Metal Rat, and is the year of new opportunities, new beginnings and evolving. Digital for Good have an awesome opportunity for your organisation to grasp those new digital opportunities, to begin that new digital project and to realise... Read more

I'm the CEO of a small ( but fabulous) third sector organisation - and I can clearly remember life before computers, before mobile phones and before email. When I started work I had a Rolodex file on my desk with all my contacts. If I wanted to send a letter it took a minimum of... Read more

Last month, visitors to this site may have enjoyed a blog about the journey SCVO has been on to create a digitally confident third sector in Scotland by my colleague and Head of Digital, Sally Dyson. As a Digital Participation Officer, a large part of my role is to support... Read more

Sacro is a Scottish community justice organisation which works to create safer and more cohesive communities across Scotland. Sacro provides a wide range of services spanning all aspects of the community justice continuum. These range from conflict resolution to prevent disputes... Read more

We have been running a digital lending library at Govan Housing Association for almost three years and have found that it is a brilliant way to reduce barriers to digital participation. To date our library consists of 22 iPad, 15 laptops, 3 Digital SLR Cameras, Audio Recording... Read more

Over the past few months we’ve been working closely with colleagues at Glasgow Kelvin College to develop a brand new qualification for the housing sector in Scotland. This new qualification, Certificate in Digital Inclusion Project Management, is a credit rated qualification at... Read more

One of the issues facing those interested in digital inclusion research is the incredible speed at which new publications emerge: the sheer quantity of pertinent information, both coming from the field of practice and from academic study, can be overwhelming. Over the last few... Read more

Sarah Neary, Digital Participation Officer at West of Scotland Housing Association, shares her chat with Lily - a tenant she's helped get online. Lily, 83, has been receiving home visits from our Digital Participation Officer to learn more about her iPad. Here she tells us what... Read more

Trustees Week 2019 saw Third Sector Lab and SCVO Digital bring together charities and people working in digital industries to create greater understanding of how we practically get more digital folk on charity boards. Digital Trustees Scotland was part of the roadshow developed... Read more

I’ve been lucky over the last few months to be a member of SCVO’s Digital Champions in Social Housing project. It’s been great to meet other people passionate about supporting our residents and our organisations to get better at digital. I’ve also been lucky enough to receive... Read more

We often use the term digital trustees as if they’re a homogenous group of people all with the same skillset. They’re not! There are so many digital skills, from web development to digital marketing to cyber security. Choosing someone with the right skills for your board (as with... Read more

This June, I was lucky enough to be opening speaker at the Third Sector Lab Digital Trustees Scotland event held in Glasgow and funded by the National Lottery Community Fund. The event brought together senior leaders from the voluntary sector with people working in the digital... Read more

Back in August we were delighted to welcome 19 new Charter Fund organisations on board, and earlier today we joined one of them, The Marie Trust, as they hosted a ministerial visit by Kate Forbes, MSP. Kate Forbes MSP with Frances McKinley, Chief Exec at the Marie Trust The Marie... Read more

This year our Digital Participation Charter Fund had an incredible level of interest and the standards were very high. With a limited amount of funding it’s always disappointing not to be able to invest in everyone. Fortunately, as part of our involvement in the One Digital... Read more

Two things help or hinder the progress of digital evolution in any organisation – culture and leadership. Charities led by a senior team who trust their staff and understand the potential of technology, whose culture is focused on openness, experimentation and entrepreneurship... Read more

In my last blog I described how I had spent a large amount of my first few weeks trying to get to grips with the cyber support landscape here in Scotland. I am delighted to say that progress has been made and I now know my cyber catalyst network members from my NCSC resources – a... Read more

We’ve always been impressed with how committed housing sector staff are to their work, but we were blown away when one Tenant Participation Officer attended our second Digital Motivators Bootcamp in Inverness on the 9th and 10th September with a recently broken ankle - they were... Read more

Southside Housing Association is participating in SCVO’s Social Housing Digital Champions Network. Having joined the SCVO’s digital motivators group back in April, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting digital leaders from across Scotland’s social housing sector to discuss and debate... Read more

Kicking off in 2016, our Senior Leaders Programme has worked with over 90 voluntary sector leaders. Using an action learning set approach, we have helped and supported them to successfully navigate the digital landscape and be a leader in the 21st Century. Our participants attend... Read more

Digital technology has long been celebrated for making the world smaller through its ability to connect people all over the world, with the click of a mouse or touch of a screen, in an instant. However, the feedback we were collecting during our IT sessions was uncovering... Read more

The next decade could bring some of the most profound social, economic, political and environmental changes in living memory. In 2030, Scotland’s population will be larger and older. The rise of artificial intelligence and automation will have radically changed the jobs market... Read more

“That job description sounds like a challenge – I fancy that!” I can’t believe it is three months since I uttered those words and a mere one and a half months since the challenge became mine. My name is Alison Stone and I am the newly appointed Cyber Resilience co-ordinator at... Read more

In the spring of 2017 the Scottish Government Digital Participation Team approached North Ayrshire charity CLASP (Community Led Action & Support Project) to deliver a digital participation project. As a result, that summer I started as Digital Participation Officer to set up and... Read more

We were delighted to recently announce the seventh round of funding for the Digital Participation Charter Fund, shared between 19 organisations and benefiting over 3,000 people. The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations’ (SCVO), in partnership with the Scottish Government... Read more

This was how we had internally billed the second in a series of workshops bringing together funders and charities across Scotland. Our aim for this stream of work is to develop high level principles and models for re-focussing how funders and charities work together across... Read more

CAST is running three free ‘Design Hop’ workshops in partnership with SCVO in September, in Inverness, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Read more and sign up here. Are you keen to understand how ‘digital’ can help improve your organisation’s impact, reach and focus, but not sure where to... Read more

73% of charities want their senior team to offer a clear vision of digital and what it could help them achieve. Join a group of senior leaders and give your organisation the vision it wants. You have a unique opportunity to work alongside other voluntary sector CEOs, department... Read more

This is the second of our two-part report on the Digital Participation Charter pilot research - to read part one click here. Charter Commitments We asked participants to give us specific examples of how they had met, somewhat met or exceeded their Charter commitments. “We have... Read more

Currently one in five people in Scotland lack essential digital skills. These are the skills of communicating, handling information and content, transacting, problem solving and being safe and legal online This equips everyone to fully participate in modern day to day life. The... Read more

Cyber Essentials is like an MOT test for your car – it confirms that your IT systems have passed a key set of standards. If you can show that your organisation is meeting the security standards in Cyber Essentials, you can be confident that you have some protection against the... Read more

Last week saw the release of the Lloyds Bank 2019 Consumer Digital Index and the Ofcom Adults: Media use and attitudes report 2019. These two reports contain key insights into the ways that different groups engage with the word through digital means, as well as highlighting those... Read more

When I started at SCVO three years ago, we maintained a wide portfolio of websites developed in different languages and technology stacks, including WordPress, bespoke ASP.NET, and PHP/MySQL. We also had a strategic direction to move all business data from separate databases into... Read more

Around 1 in 5 adults in Scotland do not have the digital skills that they need to make the most of new digital technology. The divide is becoming narrower but deeper, and the people who don’t have digital skills are also likely to face other types of disadvantage, such as poverty... Read more

In Part 1 of this blog, we looked at what insights we gained from a year of running a digital checkup and offering support calls. In this post, we look at what we learned about how this worked as a service. Just over a year ago, we went live with a beta version of our online... Read more

Find out how our first Digital Motivators in Housing Bootcamp went and how you can get involved in our future cohorts before applications close on 31st May. "I heard there are more smart phones than toothbrushes in the world!" This was just one of the many interesting discussion... Read more

What we’ve learned from a year of digital checkups At SCVO we’ve been running an online digital health check and follow-up for support for over a year. About 200 charities have taken the self-assessment, and over 60 of these have had follow-up support via a one-to-one phone call... Read more

Overview: There are an estimated 788,000 unpaid carers in Scotland, including 44,000 carers under the age of 18. A network of over 60 local carers centres exist across the Scotland to provide support services to carers in their local communities. These organisations range in size... Read more

Every year ‘Digital Leaders’ recognise the work of organisations and inspirational individuals working to make the most of the digital world. Last year Gillian Docherty- CEO for Scotland’s Data Lab was the overall winner. The fantastic work taking place across Scotland is well... Read more

For many of us the digital age has brought about new and ever more convenient ways of going about our day to day lives. Whether it’s doing our online banking, ordering the weekly food shop or buying presents for that family member whose birthday we forgot; digitalisation has... Read more

Diane Webb - Digital Policy Lead at Renfrewshire Council - writes here about sourcing an affordable laptop for a young man starting an apprenticeship. This brings to life the challenges outlined in reports such as “Switched on, digital access for all”, recently published by the... Read more

Today marks the start of our first ever Cyber Scotland Week, centred around the National Cyber Security Centre’s (NCSC) CYBERUK, taking place on 24-25 April in Glasgow. This Scottish Government initiative raises awareness of the importance of cyber resilience to our citizens... Read more

My late mother was fascinated by the digital age even though at that time it hadn’t gained the public consumption traction that it has today. We were all just dipping our toes in, googly-eyed with awe at all the shiny new technology that promised a life of ease and connectivity... Read more

Two years ago, I applied for a post in Govan Housing Association as their Digital Inclusion Worker. Coming from a CLD background the advert used all my favourite words; empowerment, inclusion and informal education, but I still remember my first thought being “Why would a... Read more

For so many of us being engaged digitally seems like such a natural part of our day. We check the weather and the news, we engage with people we know (or would like to), we bank, we shop…all elements of our everyday lives. But, often the people who could benefit most from being... Read more

Below is a blog by the team at North Ayrshire Women’s Aid, outlining their activities which have been supported by the Digital Participation Charter Fund: 'The Universal Women project began in March 2018, initially as a way to support the women in our service cope with the... Read more

The term “digital by default” trips off the tongue very easily in modern society, however for many members of our communities, going digital can be a very daunting task indeed. Having been appointed as Parkhead CAB’s new Digital Advisor at the end of 2018, I have been working to... Read more

Camphill Blair Drummond offers a home, meaningful activities and opportunities for personal development to adults with learning disabilities and other special needs. Back in April 2017 an email came into the community which introduced the Digital Participation Charter Fund. At... Read more