Cumbrian visitor giving generates £60k in six months for conservation charities
Howard Lake | 3 January 2013 | News
Top-up donations at small businesses from visitors to Cumbria have generated £60,000 in the last six months of 2012 for nature conservation projects across Cumbria. The sum was raised via businesses operating visitor giving initiatives through Cumbria-based Nuture Lakeland.
The most common method of generating donations is an optional £1 donation on top of the cost of a hotel or B&B room at the time of booking, or donations generated through collection boxes. Other methods include offsetting visitors’ impact on nature through a donation per mile travelled by car within Cumbria.
The half year total has been boosted by Nurture Lakeland’s ‘Fabulous Fundraising Birthday Bonus’, which celebrated the organisation’s 18th birthday. This initiative allowed companies to take part in some one-off fundraising and receive exposure through Nurture Lakeland’s website, Facebook and Twitter pages in return.
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The £60,000 has already been distributed to the charities which include Friends of Dubwath Silver Meadows, Red Squirrels Northern England, National Trust, Woodland Trust, Friends of the Lake District, Lake District National Park and Cumbria Outdoors.
To help inspire other businesses wishing to give something back to nature within Cumbria, Nurture Lakeland has developed a fundraising toolkit, featuring ideas on how to encourage donations.
Nurture Lakeland’s Director, Sue Savege, said: “The total raised will make a huge difference to conservation projects and it just goes to show how lots of small donations can add up to a big sum that can really make its mark when it comes to conserving our landscape and its flora and fauna. No business should think that their donation will not have an impact, as Visitor Giving is about the power of many, who combine their resources and work as a conservation collective which can bring about positive change through Nurture Lakeland’s Visit Give Protect programme”.
www.nurturelakeland.org
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.