Introducing Change Takes Trust

Launching today, Change Takes Trust is The Robertson Trust’s new delivery plan, guiding our work through to 2028. 

At this midpoint in the strategy, we’ve taken time to reflect on how best to achieve our objectives over the next three years. Our new plan sets out not only what we will do to continue becoming a social change organisation, but also how we will do it. It builds on, rather than departs from, our first delivery period and remains firmly rooted in our 2020–30 strategy.

What is new is the scale of our commitment: over the period, we will increase our charitable expenditure to an average of at least £30 million a year, enabling us to support partners and communities in Scotland with greater ambition and reach.

Steering by values

Last month, we previewed Change Takes Trust with staff, trustees, expert advisers by experience, and grantholders at our second annual Còmhla – Scots Gaelic for ‘together’ – a year after we began co-designing the plan. 

We described it as the ship built to navigate the waters around and ahead – the external conditions affecting us. In such volatile and polarised times, the course we have charted since 2020 and the conditions we see today can only be a partial guide. That's why, in the absence of a map, we will steer by our values as compass points: ambition, connection, integrity and a new value of equity. By staying true to these values, we give ourselves the best chance of building the trust we need to move forward.   

Five pillars            

Crucially, the plan is an evolution rather than a change of course. We now see ourselves as becoming a social change organisation because we can see even more clearly the long-term shifts needed in Scotland if we are to drive poverty and related trauma risks decisively downwards – and the limits to previous funding models.

While independent funders can only ever be one part of a big, complex picture, we need to be more collaborative, connected into the people and places we are here to serve, cross-sectoral and catalytic in our approach.  That's why we have shaped the plan around five pillars:

·         Develop systems change funding

·         Focusing further on prevention

·         Empowering communities and working across sectors

·         Growing our influence

·         Building capacity for social change

These are built on a foundation of improvement and innovation in our ways of working.

Over the coming months, we’ll be shining a spotlight on each of these pillars and our foundation, sharing insights, stories, and reflections from partners and staff through a series of blogs.

Building on progress

While the new plan signals change, we are not setting out on a brand-new course. In the past three years, we have been gearing up and made progress in key areas. For example:    

• We have developed a series of Programme Awards in pursuit of ‘big change that lasts’ including on in-work poverty and an analysis/briefings fund ahead of the 2026 Scottish Parliament election.    
• On Open and Trusting grant-making, the share of unrestricted Large and Small Grants via Our Funds rose from 37% in March 2023 to 57% by March of this year.   
• To strengthen alignment with our mission, we have created new Scholarship bursary offers, including for Mature and Parent students, and developed a revised funding theme of Nurturing Relationships.
• We are developing two Community Power Funds, to enable small/medium organisations and individuals to take action to generate social change:  an Advancing Racial Justice Fund for Scotland and GLAD (Grassroots Leadership Awards)
• We are developing demand-led forms of Funder Plus support on top of the grants we make, following our Plus Fund pilot.
• We have designed an Impact and Insights Framework to gauge the contribution of the Trust and our grantholders through quarterly thematic reporting with implications for practice.
•  We are developing our approach to Social Impact Investing, as a bridge between grant-making and investments.
• And we have taken steps towards embedding participation of experts by experience into assessment and decision-making.

While the new Plan takes us to 2028, our ten-year Strategy runs to 2030. We are not changing our strategic intent or our mission (revised last year). But the time is right to refresh our strategy so that we are looking ahead to the end of this decade with as much clarity as the times allow for.

In early 2026, we will publish a revised strategy statement about the destination we aim to reach and the ‘vital signs’ that will tell us if we are on course.     

We look forward to hearing your feedback and questions about Changes Takes Trust. Please get in touch with us at trtcomms@therobertsontrust.org.uk.