Philanthrobeats Project Diary Vol 1
Philanthrobeats started in 2012 and back then, as some of you will remember, the entire proceeds of our events were used to fundraise for other charities - ranging from the all-powerful Amnesty International, to the grassroots organisation World Spirit Forum Theatre. Because there are so many great causes and great charities out there, all desperate for fundraisers, deciding which charity to raise money for would often spark debate amongst everyone involved. We once tried to put up a voting board at one of our nights but that, uh, didn’t go so well… Combined with the fact that, most of the time, we had absolutely no idea what the charities were doing with the money we raised for them - a decision was made. We registered as a charity, or more specifically, a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation.
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An SCIO is a new model designed by the OSCR (Scotland’s charity regulator) to save charities registering a separate company if they want to sell anything. We also partly chose said model because trustees aren’t held liable for the actions of the charity, and just in case someone dies at one of our events – which is becoming more and more likely every time – we wouldn’t be sued. Therefore, I’d like to remind anyone who may be intending to sue us: it is your money and we welcome a challenge.
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Anyway, it has been just over six months, and with our second fundraiser coming up and administrative work finalised (we have a child protection policy now, no shit) - it would only be appropriate to tell you what we have done with the money that you all kindly parted with in order to attend our first ever PB fundraiser. A small percentage of the money has been spent on stuff that we considered to be necessities for the organisation and were previously paid for by members, before Philanthrobeats nearly bankrupted us. For example, our webhosting and recent soundcloud-pro purchase, which we’re hoping is of some benefit to our members and supporters alike, and will help improve our visibility as an organisation.
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Some PB volunteers helping out with production for one of our events. .
You will note that the proceeds of our next club event with Reverb are going towards our projects for asylum seekers and refugees. Some of your money from previous events has already gone towards supporting some of the most vulnerable people in Glasgow. Two weeks ago, some of the money raised from Philanthrobeats’ last event - along with some money from the fantastic new charity Dignity Matters - helped accommodate a single female who otherwise would have been street homeless. We have also given some practical financial support to destitute asylum seekers.
If a minor wishes to claim asylum, with no form of documentation proving their age (which most asylum seekers do not have), a social worker representative will carry out an age assessment on them. An initial age assessment can be something as simple as a visual assessment or a social worker asking a variety of probing questions to someone who is usually extremely exhausted anyway. I’m sure that I don’t need to tell you that it is extremely difficult to judge someone’s age by looking at them. If you are assessed as ‘significantly over 18’ it results in you having no recourse to public funds and potentially makes a minor street homeless based on an extremely flawed analysis.
Anyway, your money has paid for new, warm clothes for an age disputed 16 year old female who arrived with the intention of trying to find her mother, and was forced to travel down to Croydon to claim asylum by herself. She has since found her mother. We didn’t do that but we definitely made her journey a lot easier. Furthermore, your money accommodated a traumatised young man who would have had to sleep at a night shelter. It allowed us enough time to get him into asylum accommodation, and the other support networks in place. He is reportedly doing much better now.
However, we did not register as a charity with the intention of supporting asylum seekers exclusively. The money we have raised so far has enabled us to put on an event such as our last event at the Old Hairdressers for Mental Health Awareness Week. We made absolutely no profit from this night but, regardless, it was a pretty important event in my opinion. It got people thinking about mental health. Moreover, we had the chance to hear the stories of some pretty incredible people. We will continue to host free events to raise awareness of certain issues, and sometimes they will cost us money.
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Spoken word at our last event at the Old Hairdressers - raising awareness of Mental Health.
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Currently, we have two large projects on the agenda. One is to host music classes for asylum seeker & refugee children. We will be offering children from such backgrounds the opportunity to learn a musical skill of their choice (including DJing!). We will be opening up applications for people interested in tutoring, so if you know how to play an instrument and want some experience teaching often vulnerable children, please fire me an email. The latter is a project currently being organised by Louise Shaw, a former committee member and all round do-gooder. The intention is to do some form of creative regeneration of the front of Whitevale baths in Glasgow, more news on that soon, but if you want to get involved email [email protected]. As soon as we have enough money, we will open up our project proposal scheme again to anyone who has a cool project that needs funded.
Once we submit our accounts at the end of our fiscal year, we will make a copy available on our website. We want to make our finances as transparent as possible, so we do not fall into the trap that other charities have before us. As always, we will try and make your money stretch as far as possible, so please dig deep on the 21st.
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Our next event is for Refugee week and will be hosted in collaboration with Re:verb, on Saturday 21st June @ Stereo. Check the facebook event page here: https://www.facebook.com/events/789664251063815/.
. Owen Fenn [email protected]