I’m delighted to be launching the celebrations for our 10 year anniversary in Scotland. Over the years we’ve worked closely with more than 300 business leaders and almost 100 charities and social enterprises. We’ve had a lot of learning, some great successes (and challenges) and most of all many terrific stories. We’ll be sharing more of these stories throughout our celebratory year.

Celebrating 10 years in Scotland logo

We opened our doors in Edinburgh in 2007 and have been through many ups and downs, in a constantly, and often dramatically, changing landscape – for both our charity and our business partners. Charities’ sustainability and effectiveness is at the heart of what we do, with a focus on helping to build resilience for the future. We have been measuring our impact over the ten years and we’ll be sharing some of our successes and achievements to date. It’s wonderful to report that the programme has made a significant impact on our business members – our ‘Pilotlighters’ too. 

Creating effective partnerships has been an important part of our story and one highlight is our participation in the ‘Our Moment’ Commonwealth Games legacy programme in 2014. The Scottish Government and Big Lottery Scotland supported Pilotlight to engage with 12 health and sports social enterprises and charities in and around Glasgow. Through this we were able to support even more charities, reaching thousands of adults, children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds creating positive change in their daily lives.

In spite of our 10 year track record, we’re constantly looking for ways to innovate and work in collaboration to provide the best support for our partner charities. This year is one of celebration for us; a chance to reflect and take pride in what we’ve achieved in Scotland so far, but also a chance to look forward to how we can do more, and better.  We’ll be reconnecting with some of our earliest charity partners about their impact over the past 10 years, and we’ll also be hosting a celebration event in Edinburgh in June to mark our anniversary – where we look forward to sharing our plans for the future.

A huge thank you from all of us to everyone who has been part of Pilotlight in Scotland from day one, and to those who have joined us along the way. We are looking forward to the next decade of inspiration, challenge and positive change and welcome friends old and new to come with us and be part of the journey. 

Look out for next month’s story celebrating Pilotlight in Scotland!