Help us make swimming accessible to everyone

Aim

Creating a dedicated swimming facility where everyone can learn, participate and belong – regardless of ability, background or income.

Who are we?

SwimWise Scotland is a Community Interest Company created to help more people learn to swim, become confident around water and develop a lifelong relationship with it.

We already work with children, adults, schools and open-water swimmers across our Highland community, from first experiences in the water through to developing skills, confidence and independence.

We believe swimming should meet people where they are. For one person that might mean learning to swim for the first time; for another, developing confidence after years away from the water; progressing their technique; swimming for fitness; or discovering the freedom of open water.

There shouldn't be one type of swimmer — or one route into swimming.

Why are we crowdfunding?

We want to create a dedicated swimming facility and permanent home for SwimWise Scotland.

At the moment, our ability to provide swimming is constrained by access to other people's facilities. A home of our own would allow us to deliberately build around the needs of the people we serve.

Importantly, we're not trying to create a facility where everything must either be commercially profitable or entirely grant-funded.

We're building a sustainable model where fee-paying lessons, coaching, memberships and pay-as-you-go swimming can sit alongside funded and subsidised opportunities.

That means someone's ability to pay the full commercial cost of swimming doesn't have to determine whether they get to participate.

How we'll spend the money raised

Funds raised through this campaign will contribute towards establishing and equipping our new swimming facility.

That includes the infrastructure needed to create a safe, welcoming and professionally operated environment for swimming lessons, coaching, school swimming and community use.

As our plans progress, we'll share more detailed information about the facility, equipment and development costs so supporters can see what their contribution is helping us build.

Community impact

This is about much more than putting a swimming pool inside a building.

We want to create more access to swimming.

A dedicated facility would allow us to expand children's and adult swimming lessons, support school swimming, provide funded and subsidised places where needed, and create more opportunities for people to simply swim.

When the pool isn't being used for structured teaching and coaching, we want it working for the community too, through memberships and pay-as-you-go access.

The result is a facility that works harder: generating income where appropriate while creating capacity for access where money might otherwise be the barrier.

And ultimately, we want more people in our community to be able to say: “Swimming is for me.”

How you can play your part

You don't have to be a swimmer to help make this happen.

Donate to the campaign if you're able to. Every contribution moves the project forward.

Share our Crowdfunder. Tell friends, family, colleagues and local businesses what we're trying to create. Reaching people beyond our existing swimming community will be enormously important.

Support or partner with us. We'd love to hear from businesses and organisations interested in contributing, providing equipment or services, sponsoring part of the project, or helping us create opportunities for others to swim.

And if you can't contribute financially, sharing the project and helping more people discover what we're building is valuable too.

Together, we can create a permanent home for swimming where more people can learn, participate and belong — regardless of ability, background or income.

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 24th November 2026 at 8:47pm