Who is Kirsty Gilchrist?

Kirsty founded soloco in 2012 as the first crowdfunding platform in Scotland, and soon realised that rather than be a web administrator she wanted to get her hands dirty and actually understand how to use crowdfunding to engage with a crowd and learn what makes them tick. This gave her a deep understanding of how crowdfunds worked and also helped her to realise that her great passion is in strategy and engagement and alternative finance.

Having researched at the Edinburgh Business School through a Practice Knowledge Fellowship, Kirsty explored and developed a methodology that can help people to understand how to plan their crowdfunds. Spotting a position to work on strategic marketing with the creative agency Bold, Kirsty worked part-time on developing creative campaigns and strategic marketing. At this point soloco took a back seat as she then moved to Inspiring Scotland as Head of Communications and then as Fund Manager, and Head of Business Development.

Her role at Inspiring Scotland entailed supporting a range of learning disability charities and social enterprises to be financially sustainable on behalf of Scottish Government , and to look at how this portfolio could help improve policy and implementation at Government level. Kirsty has collaborated on the design of several projects and transformational changes in the learning disability space, while at the same time heading the consultancy arm for Inspiring Scotland. This helped her to meet a wide range of organisations of all shapes and sizes to help them, primarily, with their strategy.

January 2022 saw Kirsty leave these positions to go on an adventure named ‘The Great Unknown’ with her husband David. This resulted in them blogging their journey while driving 10,700 miles across 28 states over three months. The only rule was no forward planning and to simply meet and the great unknown around the country. This strategy worked wonders and the adventure has given a whole new layer to Kirsty’s experiences. She has now picked back up with soloco full-time to bring all those previous experiences to help others to focus on strategy development on business for good.