Dòrlach
Trustees’ Annual Report 1[st] May 2024 to 9 October 2025
Scottish Charity Number: SC050162
Address: 17 Àird an Aiseig, Scalpaigh, Na Hearadh, HS4 3XZ
Facebook: Dòrlach
Charity Trustees
The following Trustees took office at the last charity AGM on 1[st] May 2024:
stepped down from her role due to personal commitments in September 2025.
Apart from the above Trustees, the following people have taken or renewed their office in the steering committee:
Objectives and activities
Dòrlach was established to advance education, heritage and culture by:
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researching and recording the minority Gaelic dialects of Scotland, and encouraging, enabling and promoting their active use as living community vernaculars;
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organising cultural and linguistic exchanges between speakers of Scottish Gaelic and speakers of other Goidelic, Celtic and minority languages around the world;
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developing an orthographic approach to dialect representation in Gaelic which allows for flexibility beyond the Gaelic Orthographic Conventions (GOC).
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Structure, governance and management
Dòrlach is a single-tier Scottish Charitable Incoporated Organisation. Its affairs were managed by its Trustees. Business management of the charity is in the hands of its Chair, , its Secretary, , and its Treasurer, .
Thanks to financial support from Bòrd na Gàidhlig, Dòrlach was able to contract a self-employed Digital Officer, , between August 2023 and August 2024. While the contract has now come to an end, is still supporting the charity on a voluntary basis for minor tasks, and remains available for more demanding ones on a freelance basis.
The 2025 AGM has been called later than originally anticipated due to various personal commitments within the steering committee, and therefore this report covers a period of about 14 months.
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Achievements and performance
Dòrlach’s Fifth Year: June 2024 – September 2025
Overview
The main success of the 2024-2025 year were as followed:
1) Continuation of fieldwork;
2) A significant increase of Dòrlach’s online following through our social media outreach, contacts with other indigenous groups, and public talks;
3) The processing of some of the data collected through the fieldwork, and its subsequent use to produce an academic paper currently under review.
Each point is further explored below.
Fieldwork
Dòrlach’s members have continued to carry out fieldwork through the past year. While this was less regular than it had been in 2024-2025, it was accompanied by successful reconnaissance into areas in which we did not have knowledge of remaining speakers. These allowed us to identify new people who displayed interest in supporting our endeavour and providing us which their knowledge of the local varieties of Gaelic, in particular in the north-west of the Highlands. Initial contact allowed us to collect words and local lore and prepare the ground for questionnaire interviews in the coming few months.
The fieldwork continues with the support of of the University of Nevada, who has been instrumental in starting the process of sharing our data within academic circles.
Outreach
Dòrlach’s presence online continues to grow, even though the loss of funding that allowed us to hire a part-time Digital Officer has slowed
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down that process. Recent posts sharing some of our data in a map format resulted in a significant increase in engagement from our audience and gave us good hope that as we are processing and sharing said-data, interest for our work will spread more broadly.
At the time of writing, the Charity has 863 followers on Instagram, 2192 followers on Facebook, and 498 on TikTok compared to last year’s 636, 1991, and 158 respectively. That increase is significant and encouraging, even though activity on the latter account has diminished since the end of our Digital Officer’s contract. Engagement from the audience has increased and we intend on building upon it.
Academic Output
Following the digitisation and processing of the data collected within our 50-word questionnaire, Prof. Ian Clayton produced an article detailing our fieldwork and preliminary results, with input from
. The paper was presented at the Eleventh Cambridge Conference on Language Endangerment (9 July 2025) to an international audience, with positive feedback. This led to the completion of the written article, which was submitted for review to Scottish Gaelic Studies in September 2025.
Future plans
Fieldwork across the Highlands & Islands remains a priority as several areas are still missing if we wish to have as complete a picture of the current state of Gaelic as possible. Plans have already been made for several visits by the end of 2025, and people have been approached for further research in the new year.
Now that fieldwork is well underway and that the data is being processed, we are also intending on sharing more of our results with our audience with the aim to not only draw more attention to our work but also encourage people to reclaim local dialects and do their own collecting.
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Our project to produce an online platform dedicated to Scottish Gaelic dialect, called the BlasRm, has currently taken a backseat due to lack of the financial support that could help us hire qualified web designers. The project is still being discussed and shaped in order to have a strong plan and concept when circumstances finally allow us to begin the work in earnest.
Our two main challenges remain funding and time. While our members and followers are extremely supportive, only a handful of people are able to dedicate any time to fieldwork and data processing, and they do so in their own free time. Donations allow us to cover travel expenses for fieldworkers when they occur, but the budget is tight if we are hoping to conduct more ambitious works. The current economic climate is still difficult to navigate for a small charity like Dòrlach, and we are hoping to find a new treasurer and operation manager in order to share the workload and follow up more efficiently on opportunities.
Statement of the charity’s policy on reserves
The charity’s policy is to hold reserve funds equivalent to one year’s running costs excluding any activities. In 2025, the required level of reserves is £500.
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Accounts 2024-25
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| OSCR Dorlach SC050162 Receipts and payments accounts For the period to tth Chanty Regvlalor oi 2024 31 Q3 2025 Section A Statement of receipts and payments Llnrestrthd fund• Restrthd fund• Expendable endowmenl funds Permanent endowment funds Totsl fund8 current Totsl fund 8t perK)d to Neavest £ to Ne4vest £ to Ne4vest £ lo warst £ to neavest £ Qo aTs £ A1 Receipt Donatn3 4,324 4J24 Legac5 Grants Receipts from lundraang actNi8 Gross tradng Cep) Incorrt frorn investments other than land and buihjngs Rents from Lqnd & buiklng Gros5 recetys from other chartab actrrfrtEs b ioial 4a24 4?24 A2 Receipt• from •••et & investment saleg Ftoceeds from sak of frxed 8ssets Proceeds from sak of mvestrrents A2 Sub ioial Toral receiiits 4,324 V24 A3 Payments Expenses for fundraBng 8ctNtr5 Gross tradng payrrents InvestrfEnt nwnageffnt costs F4yTMts re9 drecty to Cttarrtab activrtes Grants and donat5 Governance cost5". Audrt l independent exarrinab)n Preparatn of anntsal accounts Le981 costs Other A3 Sub ioial A4 Payments relating to asset and in¥e¥tment movements FrChase$ of frxed assets Pljrchase of investrwts A4 Sub [al Totslpayments 1,781 1,781 A5 Translers to l {Iroml fvnds Surplus l(deficni roryear 1,781 1,781
Declaration Signed on behalf of the charity trustees: Print name Cathraiche I Chainnan Designation October 2025 Date Print name Designation Runaire I Secretary October 2025 Date