SOCIETY OF CELTIC SHAMANS
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Category: What's Free?
What services do you offer the spiritual community for free?
The Society of Celtic Shamans offers the following services for free to the on-line spiritual community:
- A well designed and maintained webpage that is frequently updated.
- A public e-list to help our members communicate freely with one another.
- Book Reviews
- Pagan Resources Guide
- Links to Ancient Texts, Celtic Myths and Folklore, and dozens of sites that will be of interest to anyone pursueing Celtic studies.
- The Help and Heal page, with links to dozens of organizations where you can make a difference with your Free Click Donations.
- An extensive bibliography to help you find good books on Celtic tradition.
- Free Earthsongs archives.
We add free features and services when we are able.
The more we work together to build our community the more services we can offer free to everyone. top
Why do you have set amounts for your subscriptions and tuitions? Don't you think that donations are more appropriate for a group that claims to be following a spiritual path?
When we first began, and for quite some time after we got started on-line, we did try to operate on a donations only basis. But that trial failed. There are expenses involved in running any organization, even a non-profit society.
The main expense is the webpage. We pay our host so that we can assure you speed, excellence and uninterrupted service. We pay an annual fee to Bravenet for some of their services.
Our Moderator, Tira Brandon-Evans, maintains our webpage, corresponds by e-mail with members and students, updates the Oak Grove lessons and the main page featured articles, and does the 101 other tasks that must be done to keep the SCS going on a day to day basis. She works, on average, between 5-8 hours a day for the SCS. She is not paid for this. Indeed, over the years she has often reached into her own pocket to pay SCS expenses.
Donations work wonderfully well in theory, but in actual fact, most people don't donate. They think they would like to – but they seldom do.
Just to be really clear and precise here. We came on-line in 1997. Since then only 30 people have ever made a donation. And most of those 30 have donated more than once. We get between 7,500-10,000 page views per month. That is actual page views, not just search engine 'hits'. In one year that is a minimum of 90,000 people who have visited our page. From 1997-2004 we have had a minimum of 630,000 visitors, but only 30 folks who made donations. That is why we have set amounts for subscriptions and tuitions.
No one in the SCS makes any profit from the subscriptions and tuitions. All of the money we receive goes to meet expenses and, if any is left over, we expand our services.
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What happened to your Healing Grove?
We do not have enough volunteers able to devote the time needed to maintain our Healing Grove. We hope to be able to open the Healing Grove again one day.
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Copyright © 1997-2004 Tira Brandon-Evans and content providers. All rights reserved. International copyright laws prohibit reproduction of or distribution of this page by any means, electronic or otherwise, without first obtaining the written permissions of the copyright holders. We retain legal counsel to enforce our copyrights.
