Tech for Good Summit 2024 — Tech for Good Alliance

WELCOME - INTRODUCTION AND SETTING THE STAGE FOR THE DAY: The Tech for Good Summit 2024 marks 4 incredible years since the Scottish Tech Army was launched at the height of the pandemic and 2 years since we launched the Tech for Good Alliance. Join Alistair Forbes, our co-founder and CEO, as he shares highlights from the past year, including progress in the development of the Tech for Good Alliance and the wider tech for good ecosystem in the UK and looks ahead to the new challenges facing the third sector and the opportunities for all participants in the tech for good ecosystem to join forces to create positive change.

MORNING KEYNOTE - FOZIA IRFAN OBE: Fozia Irfan OBE is the Director of Impact and Influence at BBC Children in Need, Chair of 360 Giving and most recently author of her Churchill Report, "Transformative Philanthropy". The charity sector plays a critical role in civil society in the UK but it is facing increasing challenges in a challenging economy, hit by the combination of increased demand for its services and a much tougher fundraising climate. Fozia has a unique perspective on the philanthropic landscape and what works and what does not in creating impact in the third sector - her insights will frame the context for the discussions throughout the day.

THE POWER OF THE ECOSYSTEM - CELEBRATING OUR INDEPENDENT VOLUNTEERS: Since its inception, the Scottish Tech Army has welcomed more than 3000 exceptional people into its volunteering pool and more than 1100 of them have contributed to the delivery of hundreds of projects. Assembling a team of strangers to work together with a charity is an interesting challenge, but we have now worked with around 400 organisations to support the vital work they do. Our volunteers repeatedly tell us about how rewarding, effective and instructive their experiences are, with opportunities to try new things, gain fresh perspectives and at the same time bring their own expertise to bear on the challenges they're resolving for our charities. Join just a select few as they discuss what brought them to us, what they've gained and what they've delivered as we celebrate and thank each and every one of our amazing 'agents of change'.

BUSINESS VALUE OF TECH FOR GOOD PROGRAMMES: Volunteering has benefits for both the charity on the receiving end of the pro bono work and for the skilled volunteers that carry it out. The volunteers benefit in a number of ways that give them the chance to grow and develop as individuals, colleagues and employees. Amongst the themes that will be explored: * Skilled volunteering as a contributor to talent strategy - attraction, development and retention * Supporting company culture and cohesion – cross-team working, breaking down silos Skills and career development – opportunities to extend or add to skills, take on new responsibilities in projects * Opportunities for senior people to continue to use the hands-on technical skills they have developed over many years

CHARITY EXPERIENCES OF IMPLEMENTING DIGITAL SOLUTIONS: Appropriate technology can help charities to increase their reach, their impact and their effectiveness but is a learning process for all concerned. In many cases, these projects have catalysed an increased understanding of the potential of technology and encouraged the charity to take further steps in digital maturity with greater confidence. In this session we will hear from charity leaders about the positive and powerful effects that the support of skilled volunteers has had and about what they learned from going through the process. Themes to explore: * Importance of access to skills not available in the organization * Getting ready – what did they learn about delivering a digital project * Relationship between volunteer and the charity – is it different to a client/supplier relationship? * The impact of the solution in their organisations * How working with skilled volunteers has changed their understanding of and approach to technology

TECH FOR GOOD REPOSITORY: The tech for good ecosystem in the UK and further afield has created a wide range of solutions designed to tackle the challenges faced by third sector organisations - while each of these will have had value at the time they were created, the level of reuse of these solutions is very, resulting in duplication and challenges in maintainability. In this session we will discuss the approach to and the benefits of an independent shared repository, supported by active collation and dissemination of solutions across similar areas of activity within the sector.

DELIVERING VALUE TO EMPLOYEES THROUGH SKILLED VOLUNTEERING: Volunteering has benefits for both the charity on the receiving end of the pro bono work and for the skilled volunteers that carry it out. The volunteers benefit in a number of ways that give them the chance to grow and develop as individuals, colleagues and employees. Amongst the themes that we will cover are: * Skilled volunteering as a contributor to talent strategy - attraction, development and retention * Supporting company culture and cohesion – cross-team working, breaking down silos * Skills and career development – opportunities to extend or add to skills, take on new responsibilities in projects * Opportunities for senior people to continue to use the hands-on technical skills they have developed over many years

THE TECH FOR GOOD ALLIANCE PLATFORM - AN ENABLING FRAMEWORK: The mission of the Tech for Good Alliance is to play a leading role in the development of the Tech for Good Ecosystem in the UK. One of the challenges is that while there is a lot of activity in the ecosystem already, it is largely fragmented and siloed. This results in difficulties in sharing and reuse and in consolidating and maintaining both solutions and information. The Tech for Good Alliance platform is designed to help address these challenges by providing frameworks and tools that can underpin a more robust infrastructure. The elements we will cover are: * Volunteer recognition framework – a mechanism to record contribution that reflects the full range of elements that play a part in skilled volunteering * An independent open-source solutions repository for the third sector * Approaches to impact measurement

IMPACT MEASUREMENT - THE PERENNIAL CHALLENGE: This session will explore the challenges associated with the development of credible and consistent impact metrics, including access to data, consistency across different areas of activity and aggregation to inform large scale evaluation. Key themes we will cover: * What are the key challenges in impact measurement? * Do we need to rethink what data we ask charities to collect? * Asking charities to submit data to yet another place is unlikely to succeed – how can we harvest data with less overhead? * What effective impact measurement frameworks already exist? * One size doesn’t fit all – where does it make sense to aggregate and consolidate and where doesn’t it?

VOLUNTEER RECOGNITION FRAMEWORK: Skilled volunteering contributes in many different ways but there is little that exists to collect, evidence and recognise that impact in a structured and consistent way. A common approach is to count the number of hours contributed and the monetary value per hour in order to derive an economic value metric, but this reflects only one aspect of the contribution of the volunteer. A mechanism to address this is one of the components that will make up the platform for the Tech For Good Alliance. Themes that will be covered are: * Elements of contribution – time, skill, leadership, innovation, impact, scalability, quality * What do individuals and employers value? * The importance of a structured framework Insights from the market – the value of awards and accreditations

SOUNDSCAPE - AN ECOSYSTEM STORY: The story of the creation of a replacement service based on Microsoft’s Soundscape technology is a fantastic example of the power of an ecosystem in responding with a technology solution to the needs of a large community of people with specific support needs. Starting from a chance observation at the Tech for Good Summit 2023, a diverse community of skilled volunteers as individuals and from companies joined forces to create a service that is now in use by thousands of people across the world. As we celebrate the progress of this project, the themes that we will cover include: * The value of the solution to its users * The breadth and depth of the contributions of the volunteers * 1% to change the world – many hands make light work * The approach to long-term sustainability

AFTERNOON KEYNOTE - CHRIS ASHWORTH OBE: Chris Ashworth OBE is the Head of Social Impact at Nominet and was formerly Programme Director at the Nominet Trust and Head of Corporate Partnerships and International markets at Oxfam. This experience gives him a rare breadth of knowledge and experience in the tech for good environment. Nominet and the Trust that it established (subsequently spun out as the Social Tech Trust) have been amongst the most influential tech for good organisations in the UK. Nominet has invested over £50M in tech for good projects and In 2021 committed to spending £65m over the next three years with the ambition to improve the lives of over 1 million young people. In this session Chris, in discussion with Laura Goodwin, Innovation Correspondent of BCC Scotland, will review the tremendous contribution that Nominet has made to date and will inspire us all to ambitious action to play our part in scaling the social impact of technology in the UK.

CLOSING REMARKS: Graham Johnston reviews the day with Scottish Tech Army CEO Alistair Forbes and Head of Partnerships and event organiser Kirsty McIntosh.