How OPAL can help your society
OPAL can provide support, funding and equipment for your society
A major goal of OPAL is to promote and support natural history societies and recording schemes, and ensure that they benefit from the funding, outreach and publicity opportunities that OPAL offers.
Our support programme will run until 2012 and has three main elements:
1. The OPAL Grants Scheme for natural history societies
OPAL is offering grants of up to £4,000 to help pay for equipment, events or promotion. We are now accepting applications for our 2010 Grant Scheme and we encourage both local and national societies to apply.
2. Publicity and new members for your group
OPAL can provide opportunities and funding for natural history groups to meet potential new members, spread the word about all the fantastic work they do and explain the benefits of membership.
By attending OPAL events you can share your expertise and enthusiasm with interested members of the public and attract new members to your society. We'll also reimburse any travel and subsistence costs associated with taking part.
3. Support materials
We will be providing a range of free supporting materials for societies. These will be designed primarily to support smaller or local groups. Keep checking back, as these materials will be developed over the coming months.
Naturalists wanted!
Do you have a passion for dragonflies, amphibians, aquatic plants or invertebrates? We're looking for enthusiastic people to help out at OPAL water survey events in your area during May, June and July this year.
You don’t need to be an expert, just have a little knowledge about the aquatic world and a willingness to share this with others. If you're interested in helping out for one or more days, email lucy [dot] carter [at] nhm [dot] ac [dot] uk.
Run your own nature survey and collect results on your website
Indicia is an online application that lets you run your own nature survey and collect and map your results online. Funded by OPAL, Indicia requires little technical ability and has a supportive community to help with installation on your website.
Tell us about your society and help our support programme
Since December 2008 we have been involving societies and recording schemes in a consultation to assess the challenges they are facing and the ways that support from OPAL can help to overcome these.
If your group hasn’t yet completed our questionnaire and would like to, please contact lucy [dot] carter [at] nhm [dot] ac [dot] uk.
Thinking of joining a local nature or wildlilfe group?
Joining a natural history society or recording scheme is a great way to learn more about your local wildlife, improve your identification skills and help the environment.
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Facebook
MySpace
Twitter
Google