For a woman who’s yet to be convinced by the merits of independence, I am oddly delighted Chris and Colin Weir have chosen to donate £1 million of their tremendous £161 million EuroMillions win to the SNP, to swell the coffers of the independence campaign together with the incredibly generous bequest of £918,000 left by Edwin Morgan.

While it does make me scrabble around in my mind for who would be on the rather blank list of prospects who might be willing to make a similar donation to the unionist campaign, I still feel delight. Why? Simply, I’m a great fan of philanthropy. It pleases me to see money donated by ordinary people (albeit made extraordinary by luck) being spent for a cause instead of just sitting gathering interest in a bank account.

This week should see the final report published by the Committee on Standards in Public Life into party political finance. This review – like all of the others into political funding before it – has been extensively leaked and already rubbished by the three main Westminster parties.

Nonetheless, it is rumoured to put forward a case for extra state funding – a provision already dismissed by Nick Clegg as untenable during a period of austerity – and proposes to cap individual donations at £10,000, panicking Tory City grandees and Labour trade union bigwigs alike.

I would hate to see individual donations capped at one-hundredth of what Mr and Mrs Weir have chosen to give, for any party. I would equally hate to see political parties gain more funding from the state and taxpayers. This is because I believe parties and the causes they stand for should stand or fall based on what support from voters, and therefore donors, they can garner.

Political parties are certainly not charities. But in a way similar to charities, if they can’t fundraise to keep themselves afloat and keep fighting for their cause, then they deserve to go under. After all, just like a charity, each political party was founded to put right a supposed wrong.

If you’ve got a cause and you’ve got someone – an individual, a community, a company, a trade union – who wants to donate to further that cause, then most times you should be able to take that money.

There should of course still be conditions and there should certainly be more transparency – some being individual donors should not be able to give anonymously or through third-parties, and they must be registered to vote, or, for companies, registered to pay tax in the UK.  Political parties, overseen by the independent Electoral Commission, should conduct fit and proper person tests and not take donations if they come from a source that could damage the party’s reputation or unduly influence its work – raising eyebrows over whether Ecclestone and Souter’s gifts should’ve been accepted by their respective beneficiaries, and inhibiting funding by loans and speculation.  And in the same way charities take on state contracts, there’s still scope for some short money funding to ensure effective opposition, in recognition of its importance to democracy.

Does it give too much power over our democracy to the wealthy? Only if you aren’t willing to embrace either new forms of fundraising like crowdsourcing, as Obama has done so successfully, or indeed accept the unions and the political levy donations of the millions of working people they encompass, purposefully designed to take on the rich behemoths of society through the trade unions’ political wing of the Labour Party. (Or at least that’s the theory.)

But building on the crowdsouring idea a little more: right now all political parties spend all their time talking to target voters, and ignoring the great masses of the unaligned or the uninterested. If they had to talk to more people, and to make a case not just to get them to vote, but to get them to give as well, just think how much better political discourse in every constituency would have to be.

But whether it’s a jumble sale or a gala dinner, political parties should be responsible for raising their own money from their supporters. It should be more open, but it shouldn’t be inhibited by caps on spending, and the majority of it certainly shouldn’t be funded by the state. After all, if you care enough about a cause, or are persuaded to care about it, you’ve got to be able to give it what you want, be it time, action or cash.