What is Believe in Scotland?
Believe in Scotland is a national campaigning organisation for Scottish Independence which exists to reach the undecided voters and to give a voice to and facilitate the needs of the grassroots Yes movement on a local and national level. Our role is to support them with materials, messaging, design services and coordinate campaigning.
Believe in Scotland is managed by Business for Scotland Ltd and is advised by a Steering Group consisting of elected representatives from 17 regions across Scotland and representatives from 9 national campaigns. This ensures that Believe in Scotland has democratic input at the core of the organisation. In total, Believe in Scotland has 128 local and 8 national affiliated independence groups across the whole of Scotland. You can see a list of these groups here.
Business for Scotland is probably best known in recent times for its publication Scotland the Brief, which makes the economic case for Scottish independence and has sold over 60,000 copies in total, with the second edition being published in November 2022.
What have we done so far?
Since our campaign launched in 2019, our partners have delivered 2.9 million items of physical campaign materials throughout Scotland. We have organised multiple Day of Actions, as well as billboard campaigns across Scotland and our social media following is estimated to be around 400,000 across all of the pages and brands we operate.
We also provided free training on social media campaigning, local press relations and canvassing to hundreds of volunteers from more than 100 Yes Groups. In February 2023, we held the inaugural Scottish Independence Congress, where 241 representatives from 126 local and national campaigns met to discuss key issues and strategies to achieve Scotland’s independence. We have also just launched our own Believe in Scotland campaign app, which can be downloaded here.
What does Believe in Scotland stand for?
Neither Believe in Scotland nor Business for Scotland has ever received, asked for, nor donated to any political party and never will. We are completely political party neutral and do not suggest how people should vote. Believe in Scotland is predominantly funded by approximately 10,000 individual micro-donations annually, including Stakeholder Memberships. We have run two successful crowdfunder campaigns in 2021 and 2022. The administration and office costs are covered by business donations to Business for Scotland Ltd.
Our focus is on advocating for independence as we wholeheartedly believe that any government, of any colour, running Scotland for the benefits of the people, economy and communities, will be better for Scotland than any party of the current system of government from Westminster.
As our name suggests, we already Believe in Scotland and we want to help people feel the same way. This is a site for people with genuine questions and for people whose heart may say yes to independence but their head says maybe or even no. We believe that once you engage with the evidence, people’s hearts and heads start to believe in Scotland.
If you already Believe in Scotland you can get involved with our initiative here.
