PARTNERS & SUPPORTERS

Baillie Gifford places great emphasis on corporate philanthropy and supports many charities and community organisations across the world. They believe that they have a responsibility to help the communities around them as well as organisations working to make a difference. They support a very broad range of projects, spanning academia, arts and culture, community initiatives, environment, grassroots sports, health and education, social causes and charities working internationally.

They are committed supporters of Edinburgh’s artistic and cultural life to boost the quality of the city as a place to live, work and visit. Within academia, they support access to education and are backing an increasing number of innovative research projects that might not otherwise get off the ground. Internationally, their philanthropic initiatives include programmes such as improving sanitation in remote areas and offering education and welfare programmes for refugees.

Baillie Gifford have supported Digital Xtra’s efforts to increase access to innovative and meaningful grassroots tech activities for young people since 2018. Rather than looking for a short-term fix, Baillie Gifford are keen to work with charities and community organisations over a longer period supporting their growth and long-term development. Baillie Gifford became a Gigabyte Partner in 2019 before committing to a Terabyte Partnership for the Round IX and Round X (2025/26) grant cycles.

Skyscanner is a leading global travel search site, used by more than 100 million people across the world every month. They pride themselves on being transparent and unbiased, searching billions of prices for flights, hotels and car hire to help find the best deals available. Skyscanner aims to make Scotland an even better place to start a tech company by supporting the next generation of engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs.

Skyscanner’s ‘Positive Impact’ strategy looks to make a difference to its communities – both internally and externally. With Skyscanner being born and bred in Scotland, it has committed to supporting technology education charities locally. Chief Technology Officer Andrew Phillips, who grew up in Aberdeen, explains: ‘As one of Scotland’s unicorns, we feel a duty to support young people to learn digital skills from an early age. As the Scottish tech ecosystem continues to grow, giving young people these vital skills will create a long lasting talent pipeline, and, importantly, can also help increase the diversity of people entering technology in the future.’

Skyscanner became Digital Xtra’s first major industry partner having supported the charity since early 2018. As one of Scotland’s most successful tech companies, their support is a vote of confidence which allows Digital Xtra to go from strength to strength. Skyscanner has also continued their support by committing to a Terabyte Partnership Digital Xtra’s new strategy, Code Xtra.

The Scottish Government’s Digital Strategy will ensure Scotland is recognised throughout the world as a vibrant, inclusive, open, and outward-looking digital nation. They are committed to working with the public sector, private sector, educators, and charities to enable everybody to share in the social, economic, and democratic opportunities of digital.

In addition, 2020’s Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review identified three fundamental areas upon which the performance of the Technology Ecosystem depends. The review made 34 recommendations across all of these areas which would, taken together, accelerate the ecosystem towards a tipping-point and substantially improve its performance. One of these three key areas is Education and Talent which consists of supporting skills development at school level and a recommendation to strategically expand support for the start-up and scale-up of extracurricular tech activities. The Scottish Government’s support for Digital Xtra recognises it’s important work in developing a strong network of tech activities for young people.