I CARRY a lot of guilt at this time of year. It relates to raffles. As a small business owner, I haemorrhage raffle prizes. It used to be seasonal, but increasingly they appear year-round. I don’t begrudge them at all. I’ll happily support local causes – the problem is my memory.
In fact, I’m thinking of leaving a box of stock in a local shop with a “running a raffle? Help yourself” sign. They get a prize, and I can let go of the guilt of forgetting about the requests because they landed in my already overloaded brain, and however good the cause, they lack a “priority” flag when clients are needing websites finished, sheep are escaping, and I’ve got 1200 words due before midday.
The ones I am less keen on are the requests for a raffle prize, or for us to share a crowdfunding link for “my friend Cheryl’s pomeranian-alsatian-poo with metastatic bone cancer so it can have a final holiday in Crete”, from people I don’t know or who reside on the other side of the world.
One of those popped into my Instagram messages as I sat down to write this – which helpfully inspired the last two paragraphs. Maybe I will share the link as a thank you. Either way, I wish Esmerelda the whatever-poo all the very best.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about crowdfunders. Fundraising has always been a necessary evil for many groups and charities. Sadly, it’s increasingly needed for individuals too, as people’s lives get steadily harder and less fair.
The wonderful thing about our islands is that charity and a willingness to pull together to raise money to get things done is woven into the very fabric of the place. It’s back to that requirement for small places at the end of the road to get things done themselves or die waiting.
The tragic loss of the Kilda off the north of Lewis last month brought out the very best in people, who have raised more than £260,000 for the families and the boat owner. Another family in Harris, who I personally know, have been supported to the tune of nearly £50,000 through a crowdfunder since they lost everything in a house fire during the last big storm.
The dad, Stewart, is a retained firefighter, and on the night of the storm, with all of Harris in a power cut, he had been called out to a fire in Seilebost. When the power came back on, he went home to Rodel and found his own house alight. There was no mobile signal, so he had to drive to the fire station in Leverburgh to get help, and the crew, who had only come back from the last call, went straight back out with him.
His wife and their wee girl had gone to a chalet in Strond for the night, so nobody was hurt, but the house is gone.
According to the Stornoway Gazette, the insurer has refused to pay because the policy had lapsed by 50 hours while he was working away in England. Insurance should be doing this, but they will wriggle out wherever they can.
Crowdfunding isn’t new. In 1885, when the money ran out for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World ran an appeal, and around 125,000 people, most of them giving a dollar or less, raised more than $100,000 in six months.
Nearly a century and a half later, the same country has turned crowdfunding into a stand-in for health insurance. A 2020 survey by the University of Chicago estimated that 20 million Americans had crowdfunded for medical costs. People are on GoFundMe asking strangers for insulin. That is where you end up when the state decides that being ill is your own private problem, and until Donald John the Terrible has been fully evicted from the White House, nobody should be holding their breath for it to improve.
We are not there yet, but the line is creeping. In Canna, the Community Development Trust has been crowdfunding to build Sanday its first road – a track of about a mile and a half from the Canna bridge to St Edward’s, costing £31,428 – because at high tide the only way to the houses and the school is on foot or by quad.
In 2026, roads should not need crowdfunding. Highland 4x4 Response, a volunteer charity which backs up frontline services in bad weather and major incidents, has been fundraising for its own PPE, first aid kits and defibrillators. Again, in 2026, you would hope that rescuing people didn’t need to be crowdfunded, but here we are.
I would hazard that the earliest form of crowdfunding was the collection plate. Before 1845, looking after the poor in Scotland was the job of the kirk session, and it was paid for largely out of what went in at the church door each Sunday. The Poor Law (Scotland) Act 1845 began moving that burden from the church to the state. Congregations kept giving, though, and still do, towards the upkeep of the church buildings, and the work of the church - locally and more broadly.
Which is what makes it all the worse that Church of Scotland congregations round the country are crowdfunding to buy their own buildings before the HQ at 121 George Street sells them out from under them.
In Tiree, a new trust (the third in an island four by 11 miles) has been formed to crowdfund the purchase of Heylipol church. They need £60,000 by February 7, and they are at just under £7000.
The Church they have given to faithfully each week is walking away, and if the congregation still wants to meet, the location is their problem to solve – or buy.
Heylipol is hoping to approach the Scottish Land Fund, the National Lottery and Garfield Weston. I would be surprised if Animal Care Tiree, which I chair, wasn’t knocking on some of the same doors before long – and setting up a crowd-funder of our own.
We have had £302,949 from the Scottish Government’s Islands Programme, through Tiree Rural Development, to turn part of the Rural Centre into a surgery. Now we need to start working out how to conjure a house out of the air for the vets to stay in. Everyone and their mother in the islands is looking for funding, and it is thin on the ground. Too many important projects are at risk of relying on how much your average person has left at the end of the month.
In Sleat, in Skye, the An Crùbh community centre has turned 10 without a paid manager, so the volunteer directors are doing the admin and the finance themselves. Norman Gillies, who chairs it, told The Scotsman this week that: “People tend to last for so long and then they fall off the team as they are tired.”
The same happens with crowdfunding. At some point, we all run out of steam and cash. It should be there for people in distress. Not for building and protecting community assets and services. That should be the role of the local authority, the government or the commercial wing of the parent organisation.
For people in distress, though, all we can do is keep passing the plate. Stewart was the joiner who renovated my house, so it’s the least I can do. I’m setting up an auction to give away a week in my holiday let, with everything it raises going to the family. And I’ll make a note to drop off that box of raffle prizes.
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