Dave MacLeod, one of Scotland’s top climbers, has suggested mountain rescue teams could use social media to publicise accounts of rescues in order to raise funds. Writing on his blog, Dave MacLeod raised a number of interesting issues about fundraising and his desire to see rescue teams do more to use their experience to tell walkers and climbers of known accident black spots and common issues that lead to people getting into trouble on the hills.
Responding to requests to publicise and endorse funding appeals by mountain rescue teams on social media sites like Twitter, Dave MacLeod likened this approach to spam, saying it was ultimately unsustainable as Twitter followers rely on having a personal relationship with the Tweeter and in many cases re-Tweeting appeals means the personal meaning is lost and therefore its effectiveness on the audience is diminished.
The climber, who last year took a starring role, with Tim Emmett, in BBC2’s The Big Climb, believes that mountain rescue teams could make more of the dramatic stories surrounding the rescue call outs. These stories, he believes, would gain a massive following on the internet and by gaining a regular audience, the mountain rescue teams could then seek donations or sell products to those readers.
Dave MacLeod is also keen for safety messages based on the direct experience of the rescue teams to be publicised more widely and believes doing this on websites and Twitter feeds could be more effective than the lecture-based approach. He said: “I’d love to see an article on why you, like so many novice winter climbers are going to get stuck high on Tower Ridge on the Ben and have to call out a team to bail you out. I’d like to see a good annotated top of the ridge showing where you can move together instead of pitching your way straight into a benightment, how you can escape from the ridge by abseil or ledges and where climbers commonly end up stuck. The URL for that kind of piece will get the retweets without having to ask, as well as maybe even helping to cut the expenditure?!”
The 31 mountain rescue teams in Scotland are made up from volunteers, and whilst the teams share core funding of £300,000 from the Scottish Government, any additional expenditure has to be raised from donations. The number of call outs is currently rising and some teams have expressed concern about raising funds during the recession. Whilst many rescue teams do have websites, with some giving limited information about call outs, Dave MacLeod’s thought provoking suggestions are based on his effective use of social media and knowledge of the climbing and mountain rescue world. To read the full blog entry, and see some cool photos of a recent climbing trip to Orkney, check out Dave MacLeod’s blog.