We’re known all around the world for our epic fire festivals, but for us Beltane and Samhuinn are so much more than just a fun spectacle. We’re a community of hundreds devoted to promoting Scotland’s heritage, encouraging creativity, and learning new skills, all the while fostering an extended family of volunteers who share our passion for experiencing rituals together. 

As a charity, we keep our society and events going mostly through ticket sales and donations – it’s thanks to yourselves, our worldwide community, that we’ve been around for over three decades!

Now we’ve added a third way that you can help us raise funds. It’s called easyfundraising, and we wanted to take some time to explain how it all works to you. 

What is easyfundraising?

Simply put, it’s an easy way for you to raise money for charity while shopping online.

easyfundraising has teamed up with over 3,700 retailers – including high street stores like H&M, John Lewis, and ASOS – who have pledged to donate to a cause of the shopper’s choice whenever a sale is made via the easyfundraising website or app. 

Over £30 million has been raised this way for big and small charities, as well as community groups, schools, and sports clubs. It’s a great way to make shopping a little more ethical and give money back to those who need it most. 

How will easyfundraising help Beltane Fire Society?

We don’t receive any public money for our festivals at the moment, and it’s only through the generosity of our witnesses that we’re able to keep putting on our ritual celebrations twice a year. We’re entirely self-funded, and most of the money that we raise comes from tickets, busks, and charitable donations. That’s why it’s so great when our festivals sell out of tickets – all the proceeds raised can be put straight back into the community. 

It’s important to us that we keep coming up with creative ways to support our activities. Times are tough for the arts and for grassroots groups, and putting on a fire festival is expensive. On top of all the body paint, paraffin, and fire rope, we also have to pay for important things like licenses, security staff, and the use of Calton Hill. As our festivals have grown in popularity, so have the associated costs (we’ve outlined some more of the things that tickets to our events pay for in this blog post). 

But we also want everyone to be able to join us and not be put off by rocketing ticket prices. We already make a limited number of low income tickets available for each festival, and try as much as we can to keep costs for all our witnesses down. The more ways we can find to fundraise going forwards, the more we can ensure our festivals remain accessible to the whole city.

How does it work?

First of all, use the button below to register with easyfundraising and select Beltane Fire Society as the cause you’d like to send money to. By using this special link, you’ll help us make an extra £5 per sign-up. 

Next, search for your chosen store on easyfundraising’s website, then shop as normal. You can also add easyfundraising as an extension to your browser, so you can keep checking whether there are any potential donations to be made while you window shop online. 

Finally, make your purchase. The store where you’ve been shopping will then donate a portion of the profits from that sale to us – and we’ll be ever so grateful!

Further information

You can read more about our charitable aims here on our About page, and learn more about how you can support our society here. 

Read our Fundraising Guarantee Statement here. 

Thank you for your time, and happy shopping. 

Featured image Gordon Veitch for Beltane Fire Society. All rights reserved.