Supporting Scotland's vibrant voluntary sector
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 Caledonian Exchange, 19A Canning Street, Edinburgh EH3 8EG.
Technology
As the world becomes increasingly reliant on technology, and as new technical innovations come along at speed, voluntary organisations need to be constantly thinking about how these changes might impact on their work. While digital development used to be a one-off project, it is now a continuous process.
- The 2025 UK Charity Digital Skills report highlighted that digital tools and approaches are becoming ubiquitous for service delivery in charities. However, many organisations still lack digital strategy, skills and capacity. You can use resources like the SCVO digital checkup and digital strategy playbook to kick-start your digital strategy.
- Most charities are now using AI tools, either as small-scale pilots or in their day-to-day work. So it’s important to have strategic conversations and formulate some AI guidance. This can be high-level and a starting point for iteration – good enough for now, to be improved and refined later. But it does need to be rooted in your values, context and mission. And you need to have open conversations with your team to ensure it is relevant and useful.
- AI tools offer considerable potential to automate admin processes and support skilled workers to spend more time on delivering valuable services. To be best placed to make these gains, you should support your team to try safe hands-on experiments, and have discussions about your organisation’s context, including your mission, values, ways of working and insights about the communities you work with, including their values and vulnerabilities. Organisations who combine practical experiments, reflection on their values and priorities, and work to optimise their data, content and processes will be well placed to make best use of AI.
- The Scottish Government has updated its AI Strategy. While this still holds commitments around making AI Trustworthy, Ethical and Inclusive, the new strategy has more of a focus around productivity and economic gains.
- The rapid growth of AI has spurred interest and investment in data centres, with hyperscale ‘green data centres’ mooted for Scotland. Environmental charities such as APRS have highlighted that existing planning frameworks are inadequate to the issues posed by hyperscale data centres, which are orders of magnitude bigger than conventional data centres, and consume significant amounts of water and electricity.
- AI has captured a lot of attention and investment in the tech sector, to the point where an investment bubble, or at least a major market correction seems likely. This is because investment is driven by unrealistic figures around AI uptake and revenue. An AI investment bubble and its fallout doesn’t mean that all AI products will fail – but you should be ready for some products to fail, or to become more expensive. So, when using AI tools, you should avoid becoming dependent on a single solution.
- The rollout of AI search summaries has led to a steep drop in website traffic from search engines, with many websites seeing markedly less traffic than 12 months ago. This is because AI search summaries show key information to users on the search results page, and they choose not to click through to the source website. There is no simple answer to this – but making sure that your website is well structured and up to date will help. There are lots of useful tips in this guide from Platypus Digital.
- While technology surrounds us and smartphone use has become ubiquitous, digital exclusion still affects a significant minority of people in Scotland. Barriers such as lack of affordable connectivity, limited access to suitable devices, low digital skills and accessibility issues continue to impact on those voluntary organisations are most likely to be working with, particularly people experiencing poverty, older people, disabled people and some rural communities. As more public services, funding processes and charitable services move online by default, there is a risk that digitally excluded people are further marginalised or disengage entirely. Organisations should factor this into future planning by avoiding assumptions about digital access, maintaining non-digital or blended service options where possible and designing services that are inclusive by default. Supporting digital inclusion may also become a more explicit part of many organisations’ missions, whether through direct provision, partnership working or advocacy around connectivity, affordability and accessible design.
- Grassroots movements to limit children’s use of smartphones and social media are gaining momentum both within the UK and globally. While this is generally positive for young people’s wellbeing, you will need to review and update your digital strategy if you depend on social media channels to connect with young people.
- Recent research shows that 25% of teenagers are using AI chat tools for ad hoc mental health support. AI chat tools are seen as attractive because they are available 24/7, and they are perceived as intimate, confidential and non-judgemental. However, they are not designed as counselling tools and present significant risks. Charities working on mental health issues and/or with young people should have clear and robust messaging and warnings on the risks, and consider signposting to other 24/7 chat-based tools which provide support but in a safe way.
- UK data protection laws are changing, and charities are now able to make use of a ‘soft opt in’ for email communication, where this furthers their charitable purposes. It’s a good time to update your email marketing strategy to take advantage of being able to reach a wider audience. Keep in mind that an audience coming from a ‘soft opt in’ (for example people who have booked onto one event, or made a single donation) will need more context to understand why you are communicating with them.
- Social media platforms have become stagnant and fragmented, with ‘organic’ content (ie authentic, non-promoted posts) struggling to stand out in a sea of AI-generated ‘clickbait’ content. It’s important to understand which platform(s) your key audience are regularly using, and focus your efforts there. It’s also important to have a credible presence on platforms you own and control, for example a good up-to-date website and an engaging email list.
- The UK Online Safety Act brings additional duties for websites and online communities around moderation and age verification. You’ll need to check if your content or community activity might fall within scope for these new duties (for example, certain forms of sexual health advice). If so, you will need to adopt new protocols.
- Windows 10 reached end of life in October 2025. This means that it will no longer receive security updates, but you can enrol extended updates to buy another 12 months until October 2026. You should ensure that all your PCs and laptops are running Windows 11. If buying refurbished or second-hand PCs, you should ensure that they can be updated to Windows 11.
- Serious ransomware attacks have had a major impact on large businesses, public sector organisations and charities large and small, costing tens of billions of pounds. Global conflicts and the rise of AI tools mean that such attacks will become more frequent and more sophisticated. For example, AI tools allow hackers to customise phishing attacks to make them much more convincing. Organisations need to treat cyber security as a key business risk, and work consistently to ensure that technical controls such as two-factor authentication and regular updates are in place, and staff receive regular training and support to stay cyber aware. Boards and senior leaders need to check that business continuity plans are in place, and the right checks are made on any IT partners or third-party digital platforms.
- Global tech infrastructure is usually very reliable, but a number of key providers (Azure, AWS, Cloudflare and Crowdstrike) suffered major outages in 2025. While these are typically quickly resolved, they can have wide-ranging impacts. While it’s not feasible to have a live fallback option for every service, your business continuity plans should have actions in place to respond to internet service outages. For example, a crisis comms plan including social media posts giving service users ways to contact you if internet services are down.
Planning prompts
Does your workforce have the skills to work in a digital society?
Do you, and your suppliers, have sufficient protective measures in place to help reduce cyber risk?
Is your organisation prepared for a cyber attack? Could it continue to operate when it happens?
Are you having the right conversations to turn AI experiments into useful services that align with your values?
Do you have a first AI policy or guidance in place?
Are your digital platforms and services meeting the needs of users? For example, can people easily access the info they need and easily complete tasks like booking appointments? Are you staff enabled and supported with technology that works, or are your IT systems a struggle?
Have you carried out a review of your social media and digital marketing and communications channels? Include questions such as where are your audiences, what are their needs, what are your needs as an organisation, what are the risks and benefits?
Do you have a crisis plan and a crisis communications plan? A crisis or an emergency can’t always be prevented but you can be prepared in how you approach and manage them
Sources of support
- Take SCVO’s Digital Check-up to assess your organisation’s current digital maturity and plot a route ahead
- SCVO’s Digital Strategy Playbook can help you run strategic discussions on digital across your organisation
- Find out more about how your organisation can embed digital inclusion in your core service delivery
- Protect your digital systems and data and ensure your organisation is prepared for a cyber attack by finding out more about cyber resilience
- SCVO’s blog on formulating an AI strategy includes a draft guidance policy and insights about how to put together useful guidance on AI
- Third Sector Lab help to match charities with trustees with digital experience/expertise
- The SCVO Comms Network is a supportive space for anyone in an SCVO member organisation who has an interest in communications and marketing
- Charity Comms have resources on crisis planning and social media for voluntary organisations
- SCVO’s managed IT service can support your organisation’s IT needs whether you are at home or in an office
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Related training and events
Service design for charities
Online
16 June
Training course
Digital Running your organisation Learning & development Waiting list places available
Digital Running your organisation Learning & development Waiting list places available
