Hello dearest Bluetits

We find ourselves in challenging times, whilst we always managed to run The Bluetits by raising money through our commercial activities, holidays, events, ,challenges and our shop, in reality people aren't spending as much and keeping The Bluetits afloat is an ongoing challenge.

Thank you
First of all, a big thank you to every single Bluetit, you already contribute to making this an amazing community, from organising swims, posting in your flocks, to buying merch and holidays. This community exists because we’re all a valued part of it.

We’re feverishly applying for grants but there aren't as many around and there are more organisations than ever that need help.

Click here to donate

Costs
It costs us approx £200 to £300 per year to support each flock, and with around 165 flocks to support that’s quite a large chunk of money.

Ever since the beginnings of The Bluetits Sian had a vision it’d be free to get involved, that a membership fee, no matter how small, could be enough to put someone off, and we’ve stayed true to that throughout the years. Our goal as a not-for-profit has always been to be self-funding, a community where we all support each other in different ways to keep going.

We’ve done our best to keep the costs of running the organisation to a minimum. We use volunteers to help with everything from fundraising to running the flocks, and have over 300 people helping us to keep things afloat and look after all the groups around the world. But there are still unavoidable outgoings, things like insurance, website, software, rent on the warehouse, accountants fees, staff wages and tax. You can read more about what we do to raise money and what we spend money on here.

One of our main outgoings each month is staff wages. We try to keep these costs as low as we can while still running the organisation. We work with the equivalent of 1.5 full-time paid staff, but many of us do extra hours, and everyone getting paid to work for The Bluetits is generous enough to do it for less than they would get paid elsewhere. Also, anyone you see working at one of our events, from the Water Safety Team, to the Media Team, to those on the stall and at registration, all volunteer their time.

Meet the Bluetit team here.

The reality is that for the last 12 months at least we’ve had to focus quite a lot on survival, and it’s not where we want to be. We want to do more fun things, plan more visits to flocks, work more with the flocks to see what it is we can do to support you more. We know that as a community we make a difference. We know this from all your heartfelt stories you share with us, by email or when we meet you in person, or with your comments online.

Social Value
In fact we recently underwent a study on Social Value which tries to measure the non-monetary value an organisation produces and put a figure on it. We were astounded by the results. For every £1 that we receive we turn it into £4.29 of social value. Isn’t that incredible?

How you can help
The thing is, to keep going, to keep doing the work we do, we really need your help. This is, of course, only if you’re in a position to help. We’d never want anyone to feel pressured to contribute, you all do that in so many other ways already.

If you can help us, here’s how

We’ve set up a new donation page where you can sign up to give us either a one-off donation, or set up a monthly one. What we’re asking for is for you to sign up to give just £2 a month (or more if you can afford it). Knowing that there’s a regular amount coming in would help us so much with planning for the future and creating a sustainable future for The Bluetits.

 

What if we get more?
Here’s the thing, if we raise more money than we need to cover costs we’ll put that money towards future projects, projects that will be based on things the Bluetit community has asked for. And to help us know what that is we’ll also be starting a Community Voice Panel which will be made up of 10 members of the Bluetit community who’ll meet with the HQ team (virtually) once a quarter to share more from our community with us. We’ll also be speaking to our existing amazing volunteers to get their community's views on how we can further support our flocks.

 

Thank you once again for being part of this amazing community that really does change lives!