Background to the report 

In 2021, The Wildlife Trusts committed to an ambitious 10-year strategy – referred to as Strategy 2030. One of the priorities in this new strategy was the development of a community organising programme to engage with, and empower, people to act for nature’s recovery.  

This way of working wasn’t new to all Wildlife Trusts, but it was the first time that our federation of 47 charities identified a change in their way of working with people and nature as a strategic development. This meant a change in approach, with all 47 Wildlife Trusts adopting a unified way of working in this area, which was given the umbrella term of Team Wilder, and agreeing to be led centrally. 

Meaningful Measures Ltd was commissioned to evaluate the impact of the early Team Wilder pilot sites, and a logic model was developed to show how it might progress. 

In 2022, The Wildlife Trusts were successfully awarded five million pounds from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to roll out Team Wilder work across the UK, and this was undertaken under the banner of the now-concluded Nextdoor Nature project. You can find out more about the success of that project here. 

Meanwhile, Meaningful Measures continued to evaluate and audit the wider implementation of the community organising approach. An interim report was produced for The Wildlife Trusts in 2023 and the final report has just been published. 

A summary of the results 

Providing a snapshot of Team Wildlife in spring 2024, the report establishes where progress can be evidenced, offers some realistic timescales of work, identifies current challenges and outlines the support that is needed to ensure the success of the Team Wilder approach. Some of the headline findings included: 

• Audit data shows that the community organising approach engages a wider range of communities, and it enables them to take action for nature independently or with only light-touch support from a Wildlife Trust. 

• Three-quarters of Wildlife Trusts are in a position to sustain the community organising approach beyond the end of the Nextdoor Nature funding in late 2024 

• A ‘train the trainer’ approach to learning and development is highly beneficial – and allows a greater number of people to receive training on the values and principles of community organising.  

• Progress has been made in improving equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in Wildlife Trusts, and more staff are being upskilled, but the report also demonstrates that more support is needed in this area.  

• Efforts to increase the representation and visibility of diverse role models and ambassadors to better reflect the diversity of society is critical. 

• Training and support for staff in safeguarding is key as the community organising approach aims to improve inclusion of young people and vulnerable adults. 

• The report also identified that core support from the central team is needed to enable the individual Wildlife Trusts to adopt and scale the community organising approach, and the report offers some realistic timescales for this work. 

To find out more about what we have learnt so far on our journey of developing and embedding a community organising approach, you can download the full report here.