OUR LAND PLAN
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We have long held the idea of using land to amplify our charitable objectives.​ This began to take shape in earnest in 2025 following numerous inspirational meetings with the team at Bates Wells and Wood Could Should, who demonstrated how achievable (both legally and practically) our dream was.
Their eagerness to share their learning and experience so that others may feel empowered to do the same or similar (visible through the beautifully-detailed roadmap on their website!) showed us a clear route for at least one approach that we might adopt. The size and location of the land they had found lent itself primarily to carbon sequestration.
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Over the years we’ve learned about the rewilding landscape as well as the connection between the climate crisis and social justice and inequality.
As such, education, human wellbeing and connection with nature are also objectives we’d love to weave into the project if able.
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Holding these general thoughts in mind, we are staying open to what we find, as the exact shape of the project will depend in large part on the needs of the land.
Some potential restoration and people-centred possibilities might include:
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Strategic land/nature recovery; connecting fragmented areas of biodiversity…though we also see the importance of creating biodiversity hotspots in an otherwise ecologically barren areas
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Restoring woodland; tree planting, carbon sequestration
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Restoring freshwater systems
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Connecting people and land; walks, talks, partnering with existing orgs
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Creating space for a range of holistic indoor / outdoor activities
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Community food
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To achieve this, we could either convert to a CIO, set up a new structure or carry this out with/through another organisation.
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In more detail...
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Our enthusiasm grew as we came to better understand two key areas; the capacity needed for managing the project in its simplest form and the cost of rolling the project out.
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We learned about the funding options and incredible support that exist both from state organisations and charities that specialise in helping launch such projects - and we heard first-hand what the time requirements would be in maintaining the land.
Of course this last point depends on the nature of the project but in WCS's instance (who were focussing on carbon sequestration) it turned out to be far more achievable from a capacity perspective than we had initially imagined.
Any human-centred element to the project would likely be more hands-on but this could also be allowed to grow organically - following, and likely linked in some way to, the nature restoration objective. Greater trustee and/or volunteer input and local participation could well be needed and to this end we are focussing on accessible locations with communities that have an existing interest in people and planet.
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On the finance front, we see a number of upsides.
One of these is around portfolio diversification, which would broaden as a portion of our endowment would be in a physical asset.
Through this project, we hope to be able to increase not only the capital value of our charity (through both the asset and the growing array of ongoing financial support for this kind of work) but we could even see a jump in our disposable income, which would allow us to scale up our grantmaking activities, of which we are immensely proud.
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Watch this space...!​
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And please don't hesitate to get in touch with any thoughts or questions, or if you know of any land that would be a fit for our vision, thank you!​​​​​
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