Fair Funding in Scotland

At a time when demand for support from the voluntary sector is rising, we need a funding landscape that is fair, flexible, sustainable and accessible to ensure that organisations can provide the services and projects that are vital to communities across Scotland and further afield. This can only be achieved by guaranteeing Fair Funding that includes longer-term funding models, ensures processes are proportionate, accessible and consistent, and provides more unrestricted funding with in-built uplifts to reflect rising costs of delivery.

There has been some progress, primarily with the Scottish Government’s commitment to Fairer Funding which, so far, has included a pilot of two-year funding tranches and a pledge to ensure more timely notifications. But it barely scratches the surface.

The Scottish Government’s four priorities – eradicating child poverty, growing the economy, ensuring sustainable public services, and tackling the climate emergency – will not be achieved without a strong, secure, and sustainable voluntary sector. But our sector will only continue to become more insecure and less sustainable, the longer Scottish Government, local government and other public authorities make the political choice not to implement Fair Funding in full.

Continuing to take Scotland’s essential sector for granted lets down families and communities across Scotland and will ensure that the Scottish Government’s four key objectives will not be realised.

Scotland’s charities, community organisations, and social enterprises are a fundamental cornerstone of our society and economy. It is essential that the slow and inadequate progress on Fairer Funding is driven with greater urgency, a better understanding of the reality on the ground, and a full commitment to implement Fair Funding now. All the research shows a growing fragility which is detrimental to us all.

It’s time to give these organisations, and the people they serve, the respect and stability that they need.

Fair Funding is thus not just the policy asks of SCVO - it is the demand of Scotland’s essential voluntary sector.

However, over the past year, SCVO members and others across the sector have asked us for more in this space. We have heard that, as important as the Fair Funding work has been and as encouraging as progress has been, the next steps should focus on a reframing of that work. It should focus on telling the firsthand stories of those battling with an unfair funding landscape on daily basis, shining a light on the endless areas of work that the sector is crucially involved in, and amplifying the voices of those on the frontlines.

That is what this piece of work intends to do.

Working with valued partners across multiple sectors and governmental priority areas, we have sought to highlight the damaging impact of unfair and unsustainable funding practices right across Scotland We will continue to add to it with additional themes and voices from across the sector.

Because the voluntary sector is not a homogenous blob. It is an array of incredible organisations and dedicated individuals, without whom no government priority can be achieved or portfolio can be successful, working across an inexhaustive number of areas and providing an invaluable level of services and support.

There is no eradication of child poverty, no tackling of the climate emergency, no building of a flourishing Scotland, and no availability of the crucial services communities across the country depend on without a sustainable voluntary sector. And there is no sustainable voluntary sector without Fair Funding.