National Lottery funding for Tech for Good Alliance

Scottish Tech Army secures funding support from The National Lottery Community Fund to support scaling of Tech for Good Alliance

Edinburgh, UK – The Scottish Tech Army has been awarded funding support of up to £350,000 over a two-year period from The National Lottery Community Fund., made possible by National Lottery players. The award provides for match funding of subscriptions from companies that sign up as participating members of the Tech for Good Alliance.

The Tech for Good Alliance is a UK-wide initiative of the Scottish Tech Army to provide a framework to encourage and enable the development of skilled tech volunteering programmes as part of the corporate social responsibility activities of companies in the tech and tech-related sectors. The framework and the services provided to member companies in the Tech for Good Alliance allow them to establish and develop their tech for good programmes more quickly, with lower overhead and at lower cost than doing so independently.

Alistair Forbes, CEO of the Scottish Tech Army outlined the inspiration and the aspiration for the Tech for Good Alliance, saying “In the course of its work, the Scottish Tech Army has seen the value that can be delivered by tech for good programmes, both its own and those of tech companies that have already made a commitment to and investment in programmes of this kind. The potential to grow the tech for good ecosystem in the UK and the resulting impact is very substantial but the overhead involved in setting up such programmes from scratch is a significant challenge for companies and their busy staff. This innovative funding award from The National Lottery Community Fund will allow us to scale the Tech for Good Alliance faster and further and will amplify the contribution of every company that signs up to join the Alliance. Scalability of the outputs of projects is a key principle that will greatly amplify the impact of the work of Alliance member companies and their staff.”

Welcoming the award, Neil Ritch, Scotland Director, The National Lottery Community Fund, said: “This award means that the Scottish Tech Army will be able to support many more groups across Scotland. By leveraging the capabilities of private companies in the tech sector through the Tech for Good Alliance, this project has the potential to significantly accelerate the development and adoption of digital solutions in the third sector, which will be very much to the benefit of the people and communities that they serve.”

Fiona Burton, Club Exec at AND Digital’s Club Grace, an early member of the Tech for Good Alliance highlighted the application of solutions at scale, saying “The Alliance is better than setting up an in-house programme - the idea that anything we build can be used more than once and go on to create much more added value for many organisations, not just one, is a real key benefit of the Alliance.”

To learn more about the Tech for Good Alliance, visit the Scottish Tech Army’s web site at https://sta.ngo/tfgalliance.

Contact:

Alistair Forbes, CEO, Scottish Tech Army
alistair@scottishtecharmy.org
+44 7776 198553

About the Scottish Tech Army:

The Scottish Tech Army was founded in April 2020 by Edinburgh-based entrepreneurs, Alistair Forbes and Peter Jaco, to help charities and other organisations dealing with the massive impacts of Covid-19 on the economy and society. It is a volunteer-based not-for-profit community that provides impactful digital solutions to support a wide range of civil society organisations delivering social benefit. Its enduring mission is to mobilise Scotland’s tech talent for good and to aggregate, amplify and augment the tech for good ecosystem in Scotland.
https://www.scottishtecharmy.org/.

In April 2022, the Scottish Tech Army announced the launch of the Tech for Good Alliance, a UK-wide initiative to engage with companies in the tech and tech-related sectors to help channel their resources of talent, technology and finance to deliver impact at scale on the most pressing issues facing society across the UK.

https://www.scottishtecharmy.org/tech-for-good-alliance