The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) is the membership organisation for Scotland’s charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises.

Through One Digital, SCVO provided free Digital Champion training to third sector organisations; a Senior Leader’s Programme to support senior decision-makers to become more digitally confident; a Digital Check-Up tool to help organisations to assess their digital maturity; and events and networking sessions.

Year 1 – Highlights (June 2017- May 2018)

SCVO successfully involved organisations in all three strands of their One Digital programme, demonstrating that organisations with senior level support and a culture of digital evolution are more likely to successfully embed Digital Champions. SCVO exceeded targets for the number of organisations engaged, reflecting their success in developing relationships with a wide range of partners. The work completed during Phase 1 and SCVO’s wider digital participation offer built a strong reputation across Scotland and organisations were keen to work with SCVO. The Digital Champions from each partner organisation were invited to face to face training days, and short webinar style training sessions were offered to those who were unable to attend. 97% of participants who attended the SCVO Digital Champion training recommended the course.  The Digital Check-up tool was also launched. This supported organisations to assess their readiness and priorities for digital evolution through using a self-assessment tool, supported by one-to-one engagement from the SCVO team. One third of organisations who completed the tool asked for follow up support from SCVO to interpret their results and decide a plan of action.  

Year 2 – Highlights (June 2017- May 2018)

SCVO partnered with 32 different organisations and trained 332 embedded Digital Champions. SCVO introduced a new monitoring approach for organisations as well a more robust support process for organisations following their initial training. SCVO also secured several additional funding streams which enabled them to retain their core staffing complement for Year 3 of delivery. This match funding was in large part because of the strong reputation and strategic influencing established through One Digital work. 

SCVO held a range of events for organisations that engaged with them through the three core strands, and as part of the wider networks. Across all events SCVO welcomed over 600 delegates. The most significant of these included: 

• Essential Digital Skills framework – June 2019 
• Digitally Confident Scotland – Nov 2019 
• Working with vulnerable adults – Jan 2019 
• Digital Suppliers Marketplace – February 2019 

Year 3 – Highlights (June 2019 – May 2020)

SCVO launched their 2020 Senior Leaders Programme, receiving more applications than previous years, representing a huge demand for the programme. Due to the number of applications SCVO decided to run an additional cohort of ten leaders from the care sector. Traditionally the care sector has not done as well as other sectors on this programme so SCVO decided to offer something more tailored. SCVO also worked with social housing providers and found the role of a ‘digital motivator’ helpful in effecting some of the culture change required and taking ownership of ‘digital’ in their organisation. The digital motivator is someone from middle management level who can both agitate upwards while also having eyes on frontline service provision.  

During the final quarter and the COVID-19 pandemic, SCVO worked on pivoting their approach to Digital Champion training, with a focus on remote support delivery. Flexibility from funders allowed them to develop a new approach to sustain their Digital Champion model in light of lockdown restrictions. This ran in parallel with a programme they were working on from the Scottish Government called Connecting Scotland. Digital Champion training was a core part of this programme, and SCVO’s ability to use and develop this model has been made possible through their involvement in One Digital. SCVO are now able to offer their wider Digital Champion offering to organisations across the voluntary sector to help them embed digital inclusion in their new service delivery models. Learnings from SCVO during Year 3 suggest that the argument for digital may have been won but other challenges remain, including culture, service design, data, and cyber security. Furthermore, there is a sense among organisations that are ‘doing digital well’ that they should be looking for the next big change. 

Independent evaluation