This year, Scotland will be voting whether or not to become independent from the UK. On a recent trip to Edinburgh, I spoke to a number of charities about the potential implication of this to the sector. Speculations ranged and it was acknowledged that really at this point in time, none of us can know.

But regardless of the election results, our latest wave of the Celtic Charity Awareness Monitor (CCAM) makes it clear that charities need to pay more attention to their supporters in Scotland. Scottish donors think and behave differently to the rest of the UK and fundraising, marketing and communications leaders all need to think carefully about how they vary their products and messages accordingly.

Some of the key features of the Scottish market below are worth considering:

1) It’s more prudent

In general, consumers across the whole UK remain heavily indebted; there is uncertainty around the labour market, and slumps in productivity are threatening growth. However, our research shows Scottish donors to be more pessimistic than their British and Irish counterparts about making any major increase to their charitable giving anytime soon.

And while giving levels overall in Britain have been stable over the past five years, Scotland has seen a decline in the number of people saying they have given to charity – a dip deeper than in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

2) It’s more cautious

Furthermore, Scots do not trust charities as much as the rest of the GB, NI and the Republic of Ireland. Also, the correlation between brand profile and trust is not as strong as those observed in the UK or ROI. Profile is not as reliable a shortcut to trust and thus the importance of reassuring donors is all the more pertinent.

3) It shops around

One notable feature of the Scottish market is the growing popularity of ad hoc ways of giving, while direct debit giving has gently declined in the past five years – around the 20-25%. This is quite similar to the rest of the UK, where our research and others’ finds the public are increasingly promiscuous in an age where there are fewer pressures/obligations on us to stay with brands which are no longer giving satisfaction or with contracts that last forever. Charities in Scotland don’t appear to automatically be immune.

4) It thinks about welfare

A prominent characteristic we see in the Scottish market is the importance of the social welfare sector. For example, we see high levels of concern about NHS changes, despite proposals originating in Westminster not being applicable to Scotland. We also see, for example, that homelessness charities are more popular in Scotland. The brand leader in homelessness (that is the most common charity people mention when thinking about that area of work), Shelter, has a higher awareness score than in the rest of GB, where other sectors, such as cancer and children, have the strongest brand leaders.

5) It thinks well beyond Scotland

The landscape of charity brands is quite different in Scotland to the rest of Great Britain, particularly across the domestic and overseas sectors. For example, in Scotland Oxfam and British Red Cross are the first charities people think of. In the rest of the UK, it’s Cancer Research UK, RSPCA and NSPCC.

In Scotland, overseas charities also have the most devoted supporters and the most popular campaigns. This Scottish picture is in some ways similar to that of the Republic of Ireland, where some of the highest profile brands and campaigns are in the overseas sector. However, over the course of the last five years we have seen the Irish public shift favour away from overseas development to domestic brands. As of yet we’ve not witnessed this in Scotland, but will we soon?

If you’d like to know more about the Scottish charity sector and how your brand fits into it, download some details of our Charity Celtic Awareness Monitor, or get in touch on ccam@nfpsynergy.net today.

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