The Tech for Good Summit 2023 marks 3 years since the launch of the Scottish Tech Army at the height of the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic has faded but the need and the opportunity for tech for good has not, indeed it could be said to be greater than ever.

At the Tech for Good Summit in 2022, the Scottish Tech Army announced the launch of the Tech for Good Alliance - join our co-founder and CEO as he shares highlights from the past year and looks ahead to the challenges facing the third sector and the opportunities for the tech for good ecosystem to join forces to create positive change.

The Tech for Good ecosystem spans all sectors and within each there are examples of great work being done but there is a huge amount of untapped potential in collaboration between sectors. Creating new initiatives from scratch is an arduous and time-consuming process – how can organisations join forces across sectors to build on work that is already taking place and what could be achieved by doing so?

Many companies now offer their employees the opportunity to carry out voluntary work during paid hours. This reflects genuine philanthropic intent and the organisations being supported undoubtedly derive benefit from it, especially when staff are using their specialist skills rather than carrying out lower-skilled manual tasks. What are the benefits back to the business itself?

In 2015, Cisco set itself a challenge to positively impact 1 billion lives through its social impact grants and programmes by 2025. As we start 2023, this global technology giant has reported that it is 70% in to meeting that challenge.

Kathryn Baddeley has led Cisco UK & Ireland's CSR programme for more than ten years. We will hear more about this extraordinary stretch target and what the focus will be for the next two years and beyond.

Volunteers are the bedrock of the third sector – it simply wouldn’t function without them.

Skilled volunteering, whether from the tech or any other specialist sector can be transformational for charities, but sometimes doesn’t realise its full potential. How can the third sector capitalise on the opportunities that skilled volunteering offers and what is the impact when it works well?

The technology landscape in the third sector is fragmented and where common systems have been created it has often been difficult to get widespread adoption. There is no ‘one size fits all’ tech platform that can serve all the needs of an entire sector, but there are undoubtedly requirements that are common across significant parts of it. These could be horizontal applications like funding application processes, impact measurement and reporting, or vertical applications supporting organisations working in similar areas, such as asylum seekers and refugees, food distribution, and tackling homelessness.