Digital is a journey, not a destination 

Why do you need to take this journey in 2026, and where will it take you? 

SCVO’s Digital Senior Leaders Programme is built for voluntary‑sector leaders working with limited time, budget and specialist support. It provides practical, adaptable approaches to strengthen strategic digital leadership and help your organisation become more effective, resilient and future‑ready.

Digital now shapes how people find help, how services run and how trust is built—and used well, it can transform outcomes. Used poorly, it increases risk, exclusion and pressure.

With AI accelerating, hybrid work embedded and cyber threats rising—alongside tight funding and uneven digital confidence—leaders don’t need trends. They need capability, confidence and practical digital leadership that works in real‑world constraints.

SCVO’s Digital Senior Leaders Programme will help you lead with clarity and confidence, creating a digitally confident Scottish voluntary sector in 2026.

A difficult and changing context 

Although we’ve emerged from the pandemic, and are starting to reorientate and consolidate our organisations, the voluntary sector still faces a very volatile context: 

• Cost of living and extreme financial pressures – charities are being asked to do more, with shrinking budgets and uncertain income 
• More importantly, the communities and people we work with are experiencing rapidly-changing pressures too 
• Hybrid working and burnout, recruitment challenges 

“It was a wonderful opportunity to meet new people who were so open to developing themselves and their organisation through honesty, reflection, learning and developing.”

Digital trends 

Alongside this, the digital world continues to change and develop rapidly. Ideas that were green shoots six months ago are now capturing the headlines: 

• The dawn of generative AI – beyond the hype, how will this change how we work? 
• The sunset of X (formerly known as Twitter) – where will social media go next? 
• Growing cyber risks 

Our programme will help you apply the huge potential of digital to your own context so you can use it as a strategic enabler right across your organisation.

“It felt a really safe community to learn in and I would recommend it to any organisation.” 

The impact of digital confidence 

A digitally-savvy organisation can: 

• Understand what its service users need in real-time, and rapidly respond 
• Enable its workers to collaborate and work effectively and securely from anywhere 
• Access real-time data on the impact they are making 
• Make smart, strategic judgements about which technology will be most effective and learn quickly through testing and feedback loops 

Organisations that are struggling with digital tend to: 

• Be unsure what their service users need, and take a long time to adapt their approaches 
• Find that their staff team regularly experience headaches with IT and technology that get in the way of working effectively 
• Find it hard to access data, and that data they have is out of date 
• Struggle to know where to start with technology challenges and aren’t able to spot and reduce risks connected with developing and deploying technology and digital 

You’ll be taking your digital journey with some brilliant facilitators and expert speakers. And you’ll be part of a cohort of senior leader peers. This peer-to-peer support will help you grow on your journey as a digital leader. 

You’ll come away with cutting-edge ideas and insights which are relatable and relevant to your own context. You’ll start growing a confident digital leader mindset, ready to lead transformational change with your whole team. And throughout the course, you’ll be developing your own digital playbook to plot your journey ahead. 

“Really useful and enlightening six months, it's given me a real impetus to take on some of the ‘long list’ digital tasks that we face as an organisation.”

About the programme

Meet your course leaders

Maddie Stark

Maddie is a highly experienced development worker and trainer with particular skills around leadership, digital, culture and organisational change. Her work is all about making the power of digital accessible to leaders in a voluntary sector context.

Ross McCulloch

Ross is founder of Third Sector Lab - helping charities, social entrepreneurs and community groups get the most out of digital and design. He's supported countless organisations with digital strategy and has developed a number of initiatives to help grow the sector's digital capability.

Thematic areas covered by the programme: 

The thematic areas, directly linked to our Call to Action, are covered within the programme as follows:

• Leadership: Develop the skills and knowledge you need to lead your organisation through digital evolution. Learn how to create a strategic vision, empower your team, communicate effectively, and motivate and inspire others. 
• Culture: Build a culture of inclusion, innovation, and collaboration that will support your organisation's digital transformation. Learn how to create a culture where everyone feels valued, ideas are encouraged, and people are willing to work together to achieve common goals. 
• User-centred design: Understand your users, challenge assumptions, and redefine problems to create innovative solutions that meet their needs. Learn how to use design thinking to improve your organisation's products, services, and processes. 
• Data-driven: Use data to drive growth, innovation, and improvement. Get inspired to move forward on your journey of collecting, analysing, and interpreting data to make informed decisions. 
• Cybersecurity: Understand the risks that can be posed by the use of technology and how to mitigate and respond to them. Learn how to protect your organization's data and systems from cyber threats. 

• Artificial Intelligence: Understand the opportunities for and how it can be used to build better organisations. 
• Roadmapping: Review and reflect on your organisation's digital journey and map out your next steps. Identify opportunities for improvement and celebrate your successes. 

What's involved?

Each month you will use an action learning set approach to challenge and be challenged by your peers to support you to move forward and drive digital evolution in your organisation. 

The programme centres around three key questions: 

• What is happening?
• What should be happening?
• How do we make it happen?

 The SCVO Digital Senior Leaders Programme uses the Scottish Approach to Service Design #SAtSD as a framework to embed digital in tried, tested and practical ways into your organisation.

The vision for the Scottish Approach to Service Design is that the people of Scotland are supported and empowered to actively participate in the definition, design and delivery of their (public) services. It is a set of core ideas and intentions we need to build into our organisations to ensure we design the right thing, before designing the thing right. 

What's required of participants?

The Programme costs £850 for SCVO members & £1,000 for non-members.

Participants commit to a cohort and six sessions throughout the Programme. Each session runs from 9.30am to 12.30pm and will be delivered online using Zoom.