Funding the future 

Leaving a legacy to us can make a vital difference to our work and help towards achieving our vision that all children have an equal chance to flourish.

Children in Scotland's Chief Executive, Jude Turbyne, says we can’t miss out on any opportunity to help fund our future.

We work hard to secure funding from across a range of sources, so that we don’t become dependent on any one area for support. The current financial climate is making this approach increasingly important, but also more challenging.

On the one hand we are lucky because Children in Scotland delivers a wide range of activity that helps us towards our vision – we can apply for grants to deliver services and projects or test out new ideas, we can generate income through our programme of events and we can develop key partnerships which include funding opportunities. On the other hand, we are one of many charities trying to do the same thing with limited funding available.

Donations need to become a greater focus for us. And while we know we are competing with charities who do a lot more direct work with children and young people, we also know that the work we do to lobby for change, support young people to share their views and to help the professional development of these who do work on the front line is no less important.

Over the course of the pandemic, we saw an increase in one-off and regular donations being made to us – it felt like a bit of a shift in people’s thinking around who they make donations to. We thought this was a good opportunity to review our work around donations and to promote our profile where we need to.

We decided to join Remember a Charity last year to explore the area of legacy donations. It’s an organisation that supports people to leave a gift in their Will to a charity and so help future generations to come.

If we can raise awareness of who we are, the work we do and the difference we make for children and families in Scotland, more people will want to play their part in helping us achieve our vision that all children should have an equal chance to flourish.

Any donations we receive – whether it’s one-off, regular or legacy – provide us with the ‘platinum level’ of funding. That is, unrestricted funds that we can use to deliver any of our activities.

What this means in reality is that it is often used to deliver activities that are harder to secure funding for but are essential to our work. Every penny we receive goes towards the work we do whether that’s covering costs for our children and young people’s advisory group, Changing our World, ensuring all our staff get paid the Real Living Wage or helping to provide advice and information services to families across Scotland.

We know that a strong core in an organisation is what allows it to really be innovative and dynamic and to invest in long-term change – something that we work hard for every day.

And for anyone who does make a donation, or supports us in any way, please accept a massive, heartfelt ‘thank you’ – from everyone at Children in Scotland and on behalf of the people we work with. It really does make a difference.