funding
Natural History Societies
Get involved with nature - join a natural history group
Being part of a natural history society or recording scheme is a fantastic way to meet people, learn new skills and help the environment.
There are hundreds of natural history groups in the UK, so whether you have an interest in birds, bumblebees or botany, or just a general love of nature, there's something for you.
Find a society in your area by using the Natural History Museum's Nature Societies Online service.
OPAL can help your society flourish
The Natural History Museum runs a support programme to help natural history groups make the most of the publicity, outreach and funding opportunities offered by OPAL.
See below for our series of guides to support your work. We’d love to hear your feedback on these guides and develop more over the coming months. Please email your comments and suggestions to lucy [dot] carter [at] nhm [dot] ac [dot] uk.
Grants and publicity
Promote your society at OPAL events and boost your membership.
OPAL grants have helped more than 50 societies across the country.
OPAL guides for natural history groups
Setting up a new voluntary natural history group
Choosing a name, applying for charitable status, managing finances and other key steps.
Creating an effective website
A simple guide to setting up your own website, including tips on design and promotion.
Running public outreach events
Guidance and tips for running a public event - including an essential tick-list.
Fundraising for your group
An easy-to-follow guide to funding options and advice on how to apply.
Recording wildlife
How to make good biological records, advice on running a recording scheme, and recording data online.
Running a BioBlitz
BioBlitzes are a great way to involve the public in wildlife recording, but how should you go about running your own?
Useful resources
Publicise your society at OPAL events
Promote your work and attract new members
OPAL events provide a fantastic opportunity to share your expertise and enthusiasm with interested members of the public, and to tell them about your group and the benefits of joining.
OPAL partners organise a wide range of wildlife identification and recording activities across England, and all members of wildlife groups are invited to take part and promote their work.
By encouraging people to join natural history societies we hope to inspire the next generation of wildlife enthusiasts, which is one of OPAL's key objectives.
A diverse range of activities to suit everyone
Our events include identification courses, open days, school field trips, drop-in survey days, GIS mapping projects and practical conservation tasks. A wide range of animal and plant groups are studied at these events – our national surveys alone cover earthworms, lichens, sycamore trees and the tar spot fungus, aquatic invertebrates, amphibians, dragonflies, duckweeds, terrestrial invertebrates, mammals, hedges, trees and shrubs.
Our regional activities expand this even further, covering groups as diverse as moths, bryophytes, hedgehogs, frogs and bats, and habitats ranging from heathlands, woodlands and orchards to urban parks and gardens. There really is something for everyone and we welcome all natural history groups and recording schemes that would like to take part.
For more information on publicising your society at OPAL events and to be linked up with OPAL staff in your area, please email Lucy Carter: lucy [dot] carter [at] nhm [dot] ac [dot] uk.
Claim back your expenses
We are happy to reimburse all travel and subsistence costs for attending OPAL events. Simply download and complete the claim form. Be sure to read the instructions on the cover page carefully.
Nature Societies Online - are you listed?
OPAL encourages people to find their nearest wildlife group by searching Nature Societies Online. Please check that your group is listed correctly. If any details need updating or you would like us to add a new group, please email lucy [dot] carter [at] nhm [dot] ac [dot] uk.
Naturalists wanted!
Do you have a passion for plants or invertebrates? We're looking for enthusiastic people to help out with OPAL survey events in your area.
You don’t need to be an expert, just have a little knowledge 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.
2009 Annual Funding Call recipients
OPAL has awarded 28 grants of between £500 and £2000 to support the work of amateur natural history societies across the country.
More than 100 societies applied to the OPAL Annual Funding Call in 2009, and from these 28 were selected. The grants scheme has been designed to help natural history societies and recording schemes flourish.
From funding the development of websites and promotional materials to engaging the public in bee-keeping, the projects that we have chosen to support are extremely varied. This diversity is a reflection of the broad range of exciting projects that amateur natural history societies are taking part in across the country.
Read about all the societies and projects we have funded on our grant recipients page.
Interested in an OPAL grant for your society?
OPAL will be taking applications for the 2010 Grant Scheme soon. Keep an eye on our funding page, where we will announce further details.
Keen to join a local nature society?
Nature Societies Online is a service that helps you find a society in your area.
Funded societies - OPAL Grants Scheme 2009
The recipients of OPAL's 2009 grants
Through the OPAL Grants Scheme in 2009, OPAL awarded 27 grants of between £500 and £2,000 to support the work of amateur natural history societies across the country.
The grants are being used in a variety of ways, from improving websites and buying new equipment to organising family days and conferences.
This page lists all the societies that benefited from the 2009 award scheme and briefly explains how they are spending their grant. See our case studies for a closer look at some of the projects we helped fund.
2009 case studies
Discover more about how OPAL grants helped the following societies
Interested in support for your society?
As well as small grants, OPAL also provides a range of support guides, and can offer publicity for your society at OPAL events.
Grants awarded by OPAL in 2009
Amateur Entomologists Society in partnership with the Tachinid Recording Scheme
Grant awarded: £2,000
Project: Buying new cabinets, drawers and unit trays to re-house the Tachinid Recording Scheme’s reference collection.
Website: www.tachinidae.org.uk.
Amateur Entomologists Society (AES)
Grant awarded: £800
Project: Supporting the AES’s Uncovering Insects project in celebration of its 75th year. The grant will pay for computer equipment to modernise membership handling, and banners for public events.
Website: www.amentsoc.org.
Auchenorrhyncha Recording Scheme
Grant awarded: £2,000
Project: Developing a new website for the recording scheme. Auchenorrhyncha are bugs (Hemiptera) that include the leafhoppers, froghoppers and cicadas.
Website: www.ledra.co.uk.
British Arachnological Society (BAS)
Grant awarded: £2,000
Project: Developing a recording scheme website for spiders, opiliones and pseudoscorpions. The site will include distribution maps, information on local sites and species of interest, and a forum so the public can post pictures and seek expert information.
Website: www.britishspiders.org.uk.
British Pteridological Society (BPS)
Grant awarded: £500
Project: Ferns and Fossils at Manchester Museum - a free family-friendly event to promote ferns and the work of the BPS. The day will include talks, living ferns and fossils from the museum’s collections, demonstrations on growing ferns, and children’s activities.
Website: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted_sites/bps/
Butterfly Conservation Sussex Branch (BCSB)
Grant awarded: £1,914
Project: Preparing for the launch of a Sussex Butterfly Atlas. This includes developing a recording section of the BCSB website, publishing a butterfly recording booklet to encourage participation, providing training and holding a butterfly recorders’ conference.
Website: www.sussex-butterflies.org.uk.
Derbyshire Amphibian and Reptile Group
Grant awarded: £1,905
Project: Producing exhibition and training materials and buying a laptop, to promote the group, publicise its current projects and volunteer opportunities and to raise awareness of native amphibians and reptiles.
Website: www.derbyshirearg.co.uk.
Dorset Bat Group
Grant awarded: £1,945
Project: Providing bat survey equipment for the Bats in the Belfry project, which will work alongside Dorset Wildlife Trust’s Living Churchyards and Cemeteries project to engage local communities in the management of their churchyards for the benefit of wildlife.
Website: www.dorsetbatgroup.org.uk.
Friends of Baddesley Common
Grant awarded: £825
Project: Conducting a public consultation with the local community and other users of Baddesley Common to make sure the actions of this new group will meet their needs. The consultation will include focus groups, a household questionnaire survey and a public meeting.
Friends of Burgess Hill Green Circle Network
Grant awarded: £1,909
Project: The group has recently extended its remit from managing one site in the Burgess Hill area to managing 13. This grant will support the purchase of equipment for surveys and training across all 13 sites.
Website: www.bh-green-circle.org.uk.
Friends of Markeaton Park
Grant awarded: £1,901
Project: Teaming up with other local wildlife groups to run a mini Bioblitz, for children and adults to record a wide range of wildlife in the park.
Website: www.fomp.org.uk.
Gloucestershire Naturalists’ Society
Grant awarded: £1,640
Project: To support the Gloucestershire Bird Atlas project, by producing digital bird species distribution maps and by holding a county-wide event to report on progress of the atlas and show the results to date.
Website: www.glosnats.org.uk.
Hampshire Fungus Recording Group
Grant awarded: £1,760
Project: Buying and developing display materials, such as a compound microscope and projection screen, to promote awareness of the role of fungi in the natural world and the activities of the local group and national fungus groups.
Website: www.hampshirefungi.org.uk.
Hampshire Ornithological Society
Grant awarded: £1,901
Project: Developing display materials to promote the fun and conservation value of bird watching and recording. The grant will also support the Grey-Roosevelt Centennial Walk, celebrating 100 years since Lord Edward Grey (naturalist and Foreign Secretary) and Theodore Roosevelt (naturalist and US President, 1901-1909) walked a section of the Itchen valley and New Forest, and comparing their bird records of 1910 with those recorded by the public in 2010.
Website: www.hos.org.uk.
The Hardy Orchid Society
Grant awarded: £1,934
Project: Attracting new members by upgrading lecture audio equipment, producing new leaflets and increasing the print run of the society's quarterly journal. The society will also enhance its conservation activities by providing workshops on the germination of legal wild orchid seed.
Website: www.hardyorchidsociety.org.uk.
Horsham Natural History Society
Grant awarded: £620
Project: Producing new, high-quality membership leaflets and laminated posters to publicise the society in Horsham and the surrounding areas.
Website: www.hnhs.org.uk.
Lincolnshire Naturalists’ Union
Grant awarded: £836
Project: Producing four high-visibility banners that will stand out and attract the public at busy events, and give the society a more professional image.
Website: www.lnu.org.
Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists’ Society
Grant awarded: £1,520
Project: Updating the society’s promotional materials, including new membership leaflets and children’s nature checklists. The society is also developing a countywide mass participation survey to map the distribution of the Common Frog and Common Toad, in partnership with the Norfolk Amphibian and Reptile Group.
Website: www.nnns.org.uk.
Orpington Apiary Club
Grant awarded: £2,000
Project: To install an observation hive close to the apiary, allowing a close-up view of the bees and how they operate inside a hive. At Saturday sessions, the public will have an opportunity to try bee-keeping themselves.
Quekett Microscopical Club
Grant awarded: £1,650
Project: To investigate the potential for widnening access to recorded lectures via DVD or web streaming. The grant will support the club in gaining professional advice and training, developing skills that it can share with other societies.
Website: www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted_sites/quekett.
Risley Moss Action Group
Grant awarded: £1,400
Project: Buying equipment and producing promotional leaflets to run a series of wildlife training and recording sessions. These will promote awareness of the diverse range of wildlife found on Risley Moss reserve and encourage participants to take a more active role in surveying and recording.
Website: www.rimag.org.uk.
RSPB Gloucestershire
Grant awarded: £1,600
Project: Buying a laptop and digital projector so that inspiring wildlife talks (once on 35mm slides) can be brought to a wider audience. Publicity leaflets will promote these talks and the wider work of the group to the local community.
Website: www.rspbgloucestershire.co.uk.
Shropshire Bat Group
Grant awarded: £1,200
Project: Buying a harp trap (a portable 'live' trap for catching bats without causing them damage) to complement existing bat detector surveys. The harp trap will allow the group to gather data on numbers, sex, breeding condition, age and health, which is not provided by sound recordings.
Website: www.naturalshropshire.org.uk/SpeciesGroups/ShropshireBatGroup/tabid/66/Default.aspx.
Shropshire Botanical Society
Grant awarded: £2,000
Project: Expanding the social networking aspects of the Herbaria at Home web-based citizen science project, in which volunteers record enormously valuable information from historical herbarium sheets. The project will make it easier to add and edit biographies, find out where a particular collector was on a given date, and add handwriting samples.
Website: www.shropshire.bsbi.org.uk and www.bsbi.org.uk/html/herbaria.html.
Sorby Natural History Society
Grant awarded: £1,214
Project: Enhancing the existing series of identification and training workshops with improved digital and teaching microscopes. Subjects include ichneumon wasps, mammal bones from pellets, snail-killing flies and botanical illustration.
Website: www.sorby.org.uk.
Sussex Amphibian and Reptile Group
Grant awarded: £499
Project: Improving the group's website by creating new content, improving functionality and making it easier to find information. A postcard will promote the new website and encourage people to send in their records.
Website: www.sussexarg.org.uk.
Funding for your nature or wildlife group
OPAL has just launched a brand new small grants scheme for natural history societies and recording schemes in England.
The Natural History Museum will be distributing grants of between £500 and £2,000 to both local and national groups to help pay for equipment, events or promotion.
There are more than 1,000 groups in England that collect information about our wildlife, and run active programmes of talks, walks and fieldtrips to enjoy the outdoors while sharing their knowledge and enthusiasm for nature with others.
We hope these grants will support such groups in continuing their current work, and make it easier for them to expand their activities or to try something new.
Applying for a grant is quick and simple. See the OPAL grants scheme page for more information and an application form.
OPAL can also help societies by providing support materials and offering reimbursement for taking part in OPAL events.
If you are interested in joining a nature or wildlife group, you can use the Natural History Museum's online directory to find one.
OPAL Grants Scheme
Apply for grants of up to £5,000 to help your society
The OPAL Grants Scheme aims to help natural history societies and recording schemes grow and flourish. To date we have distributed grants totaling £112,000 to more than 50 different natural history groups.
The 2011 OPAL Grants Scheme focuses on the transfer of skills, to help enthuse and train the next generation of environmentalists.
Who can apply?
The Grants Scheme is open to all national and local natural history societies, recording schemes and similar groups that are active within England, including regional branches of national organisations. The group’s primary focus must be biological. See the downloadable guidance notes for further details.
Sharing your skills
The theme of the 2011 Grants Scheme is ‘Sharing your skills’. We aim to support projects that transfer knowledge and skills either between members of the group, or between the group and the wider community.
From informal public events to advanced training courses, funded projects should enable people to move a little way up the ladder of progression from complete beginner to expert.
Who have we funded so far?
Learn about the societies and projects that have already benefitted from an OPAL grant.
How to apply
Applications for the 2011 OPAL Grants Scheme are no longer being accepted. The following downloads are for reference only.
You must have Adobe Reader version 9.0 or above in order to complete the application form. You can download the latest version for free from the Adobe website.
Get in touch
If you have any questions about the Grants Scheme please contact Lucy Carter, 0207 942 5188 or email lucy [dot] carter [at] nhm [dot] ac [dot] uk.
Naturalists wanted!
Do you have a passion for plants or invertebrates? We're looking for enthusiastic people to help out with OPAL survey events in your area.
You don’t need to be an expert, just have a little knowledge 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.
.Interested in 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.
Explore Nature
This is where you can explore your interest in nature further.
CREST science awards for primary and secondary schools
CREST is a nationally recognised award programme for science project work. Designed by the British Science Association, they are open to children aged 5 - 19 years.
Learn more about CREST and how to take part on the British Science Association website.
Discover Classification - free teacher resource pack
The OPAL team at the Natural History Museum has developed a free resource pack to support the teaching of biological classification in secondary schools.
Aimed at Key Stage 3, the resource pack includes a series of three lessons on classifying species, two extension lessons and supporting PowerPoint presentations. The pack also serves as useful revision for Key Stage 4.
Learn more about climate change and ask questions to the experts
Do you have a question about climate change? Submit your question online, and experts at the Met Office will try to answer as many as possible.
You can also test your knowledge in our climate change quiz, share your weather photos, try your hand at making a tornado, and find out when the OPAL Weather Roadshow is visiting near you.
Mission:Explore - challenge yourself and explore the world
Learn more about the world around you through a series of exciting challenges. Earn points and rewards as you go and see if you can top the Mission:Explore leaderboard.
All the missions make for great school and outdoor activities. Try the OPAL challenges and earn your Nature Explorer badge.
Build your own bee hotel and help support our bee populations
Create a home for bees and join the OPAL West Midlands bee hotel project.
By placing a bee hotel in your garden you'll help support a number of important bee species. You can also help the OPAL West Midland team develop a photographic guide for the bees that use the hotel.
Join in our BioBlitzes, or get help with running your own
BioBlitzes are an exciting race against the clock where scientists and members of the public work together to find as many species as possible. Not only are they great fun, but they also collect useful scientific data.
See our BioBlitz page for information on upcoming BioBlitzes that you can get involved in, and read about OPAL's very first BioBlitz in Wembury.
We've also produced a guide for those of you interested in running your own BioBlitz.
Free Darwin Guide
Learn to explore and record wildlife just like Charles Darwin. Co-authored by Darwin's great-great-grandson, The Darwin Guide has been produced by the National Biodiversity Network (NBN) to inspire people of all ages to record and enjoy nature.
It's completely free and can be downloaded or ordered from the NBN website.
Join the Earthworm Society of Britain
Get to know more about earthworms with the help of experts, take part in field trips to improve your identification skills and help scientists with ongoing research.
The Earthworm Society of Britain has been created to give everyone the chance to learn more about these fascinating creatures.
Watch Nature Live events
Nature Live events give you the chance to meet experts and learn all about the natural world. They are hosted and run by the Natural History Museum.
We have arranged a number of Nature Live OPAL specials and they are all available to watch again here. See the videos from our recent bat weekend and learn more about these incredible animals.
Join a local nature group
Fancy getting more involved in nature? Want to help the environment and meet like-minded people?
Joining a nature society or wildlife recording group is a great way to learn more about your local wildlife, improve your identification skills and help the environment. Activities can range from wildlife recording to practical conservation tasks.
Join in the urban tree survey
What trees are growing in your garden or local park? Submit your findings online and help the Natural History Museum with a nationwide survey.
Taking part is quick and simple, and there's a free identification guide on the Museum site to help you.
Get chatting in the bug forum
Curious about caterpillars? Amazed by ants? Or just wondering what that strange-looking bug in your house is?
Join the Natural History Museum’s bug forum and you can upload photos of a bug you’ve spotted and the Museum’s scientists will help you identify it. You can also ask all your bug-related questions. Insects, spiders, centipedes and any other creepy crawlies you find are all welcome.