Using social media to raise income
How the Natural Connections Demonstration project is using social media in innovative ways to generate income.
About Natural Connections
The Natural Connections Demonstration Project is an exciting initiative funded by Natural England, DEFRA and English Heritage, which Plymouth University were awarded the contract to deliver. It is one of the largest outdoor learning projects in the UK and will involve around 200 schools and between 200-500 volunteers. This innovative project operates at a local, school-led level, in five ‘hubs’ across the South West. Natural Connections runs until March 2016.
Social media is being used, not only to promote the project to schools, partners and providers, but also to raise income for the Project. This article demonstrates how easyfundrasing, crowdsourcing and Twitter have been successfully used to generate funding for the Project.
Easyfundraising
One simple way to raise money for a project is through easyfundrasing whereby a small % of every on-line purchase made is designated to a chosen charity. There are over 2,000 retailers registered with easyfundraising including Amazon, John Lewis, Boots and Sainsbury’s. Once registered with easyfundraising, you click on your chosen charity and then buy as normal. There is no additional cost to the purchaser: to support Natural Connections go to
Easysearch
The other trouble-free way of raising income is through using easysearch – use easysearch as your search engine and each time you use it the project gets 0.05p- simple! You can support Natural Connections by using:
Crowdfunding
Following the ‘Fundraising for Outdoor Learning’ Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programme, delivered by the Natural Connections Project a session on crowdfunding delivered.
Subsequently a number of schools are in discussion with crowdfunder.co.uk and are creating their own crowdfunding campaigns to support Learning in the Natural Environment (LINE). Victoria Road Primary, a participating Primary School in Plymouth are planning to turn their tarmac playground into a green space with lots of outdoor learning and play opportunities. Their film, created free of charge by 2nd Year Media Studies students at Plymouth University can be seen on YouTube: Another project which involves Morchard Bishop School in our Chumleigh Learning Community, who want to develop their kitchen garden
The Project currently has over 700 followers on twitter, attracting, on average, 100 new followers a month. Twitter has been a very successful medium for promoting Natural Connections events and much of the interest in the on-going training programme is generated through Twitter enabling the Project to reach a much larger audience thanks to re-tweets by the Projects followers. Recent feedback includes: “amazing day with @ntrlconnections & @crowdfunderuk today. Collaboration, innovation and passion mixed in with some fundraising know how!”
Swapping resources with partners
The Natural Connections Project has also successfully negotiated resources with partners for example, Torbay Coast and Countryside Trust offered the Project the use of a yurt free of charge for the delivery of a training course in return for free advertising space in the Projects bimonthly newsletter please rename hyperlink Natural Connections April newsletter.
For further information about the Natural Connections Demonstration Project contact Caroline Emmerson, Senior Adviser in Outdoor Learning at or on 07798 637108 or contact the Project directly at
Natural England Intranet Article_20th May 2014