Who we are:
As an association of Scottish Clans, Families, Societies and Businesses, CASSOC's mission is to support Scottish Culture and Heritage in any form anywhere in the world. While we are a federally registered non-profit charity in Canada, our membership includes societies, clans, families, businesses and festival organizations in Canada, the USA and globally.
What we do:
We represent our members at games and festivals that we attend through the display of a poster for each member organization. This poster provides basic information with a QR Code/URL link to a page with more details and specific contact info. The display has proven to be very popular with event visitors as well demonstrably works for bringing new members to an organization.
In 2023 CASSOC will be attending over a dozen games and events in Canada and the USA.
In addition to our physical presence at the events, we also provide a binder for our members to display at their own booths with the equivalent image of the poster for each of our members.
The binder is available at https://www.scotscanada.ca/CASSOC_Binder_Poster_Format.pdf
The poster display and binder provide representation for our members at events even when they are not in attendance themselves.
At the events we’re attending, we will also help booth visitors research their names and find which clan or family they may belong to. This has been very successful and popular with our results often helping us direct the visitor to one of our member organizations.
In addition to the above, we also produce a quarterly newsletter for our members to distribute. It is also made available on our scotscanada.ca website.
CASSOC currently has a member activity funding program wherein we will contribute limited matching funds for a member's support/participation in a non-profit event to support Scottish Culture and Heritage.
We founded and continue to sponsor the CASSOC Scottish Studies Graduate Bursary at the University of Guelph and we welcome other opportunities to provide like sponsorship.
CASSOC is an ongoing contributor and participant in the Scottish North America Community Conference being held this coming December.
To improve support for our members, we're now in planning for an online/hybrid Symposium for Growth and Success series starting in October of this year. With it, we will be addressing the many challenges we're all dealing with as cultural heritage organizations.
About Membership:
Memberships are annually based aligned with CASSOC’s fiscal year of September 1 to August 31. The current membership fee is $50 CAD. During the festival season starting each May, we start memberships immediately with the membership then being valid through the next fiscal year. This means that any new membership from May 2023 onward is valid until September 2024.
Lastly, CASSOC recognizes that there are many of those of Scottish heritage who may not be able to belong to a clan, family or society. We’re are examining the different ways in which this may be corrected. Perhaps even by allowing some form of individual membership within CASSOC itself.