Summer 2022
As a new social enterprise Green Durham is feeling it’s way with applying for grants and employing people to support our various plans. As with any good plan we are starting small and slow, and intend to build up our activities as we grow in confidence, develop systems and build our capacity to expand our range of activities.
In Dec 2021 we received our first grant of £500 from Local Giving. We are of course totally grateful for this micro kick start grant from their Magic Little Grants fund. This also involves providing us with a donation page on their website. Here is a link to our Local Giving page where we can receive donations as either one offs or as a regular small contribution. All contributions are very welcome and help us to cover our core costs such as domain and hosting fees.
This first grant from the Magic Little Grants fund was used to update our website and engage with our community that uses the website to promote their projects and businesses. We contracted Cameron McAllister to contact all of our listings on our website, raise awareness of our website and empower the owners of the listings to claim ownership and update their listing. This has given our website a boost and ensured an increased confidence in getting the information we provide and share to be more accurate. Maps are always going out of date! This has also boosted the membership of our networks and improved the quality of our database.
Our next step is to apply for the next round of Magic Little Grants for one of our next level projects and for us to step up a bit and do a bit more as we now have more systems in place and more experience on employing people and managing projects.
We have some plans that we would like to take forward over the next few years including the following ideas
- organising a series of focused green events to include presentations, networking and fundraising, and it might include drinks and food.
- organising networking sessions which could involve films, talks and facilitating conversations similar to the Green Drinks events.
- Kickstarting and managing green soup events as inspired by Detroit Soup.
- increasing our social media impact and marketing which in turn may lead to more donations, this would involve communicating with listings and developing blogs.
- running a stall at local events and festivals, which could involve creating an event pack, giveaways and relevant participatory activities.
- maintaining and developing our content management such as maintaining listings, updating listings and adding new listings.
- Reaching out to the BAME communities across the region that are interested in and engaged with green projects, to build links, support them and help to promote their activities
Written by Wilf, Neil and Martin of Green Durham CIC
