Who funds the Forest?

Core funding for The Mersey Forest is sourced from a wide range of partners and stakeholders. These include our local authority partners, grant makers and individual givers.

This core funding facilitates the Mersey Forest team to secure and manage additional funds from grants, consultancy work, corporate social responsibility, unrestricted donations, and other innovative mechanisms such as through the planning system.

 

On average, for every £1 of core funding contributed to The Mersey Forest by our partners, £10 of additional funding is secured from other sources. This is because, rather than using a traditional funding model we use an investment model:

 

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This makes The Mersey Forest excellent value to investors, and means that investment supports strategic capacity building activities such as partnership development and policy influencing, as well as maximising funds available (through bringing different funds together). It allows us to take a long term approach to funding in order to deliver The Mersey Forest Plan.


We bring together income streams from a wide range of sources, including public and private sectors, grant giving bodies, local and national government, European funds (while they still exist) and individual giving. Our funding can be grouped into four main categories: grants, consultancy work, corporate social responsibility, and unrestricted donations.


The Mersey Forest team use the latest evidence to demonstrate the relevance of The Mersey Forest to a range of agendas – how it can achieve 'more from trees' – in order to secure funds, including from sources which may not have traditionally been associated with the tree and woodland agenda.


By matching and attracting funds (bringing funds together), we support a range of activities on the ground, which are delivered by The Mersey Forest partnership, including local communities and landowners. Activities include tree and woodland planting and the long term management of the woodland resource. It also helps to fund activities relating to the use and enjoyment of trees and woodlands. Further, support and training can increase the capability and capacity of community groups, enabling them to play a much more active role in fund raising and developing social enterprises to secure the future of our trees and woodlands.

 
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