HOW IT WORKS

Initial meetings take place online or in the landscape. The community shares all the available information about the sale, the land, and people involved, and the goals of the project. Woodland Savers, if it is able to help, responds with a project proposal.

To build momentum, we can help convene the wider community to hear all voices, and to identify common values, purpose, and visions for the project. If a clear common cause is established.

We support the launch and development of a crowdfunding campaign. This starts with local people, but is widened to welcome support from anyone in the UK. We help with language and design materials for the campaign, with local, regional and national media relationships, and social media.

In partnership with the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, we have created the Woodland Savers Match Fund, which doubles local crowdfunding, to agreed limits. Local people also receive a 20% discount on their shares in the land acquired.  We then seek, from values-aligned foundations, impact investors and grants, the rest of the capital needed to buy and manage the land through the early stages. 

We help negotiate with agents, lawyers, and where appropriate landowners, to find the right level at which to submit the bid. 

We help you select and incorporate the right governance structure, with support from our lawyers at Bates Wells and Braithwaite LLP. We offer model articles, embedding social and environmental principles in the heart of the organisation, whichever form it takes.

Once the bid has been accepted, we’ll help you and the project’s lawyers through the conveyancing process until the completion of the acquisition and the registration of the new land title. Woodland Savers, having itself committed a percentage of the capital needed, takes a minority role in your board for at least the first five years, to help the community enterprise from launch to sustainability.

We offer you a template business plan and set of resources to help you get started with the efficient, productive and creative running of your community enterprise. We offer support with the development of any of over 20 nature-positive revenue models, including woodland events and visitor activities, woodland produce, natural capital credits, and even development of a woodland community centre to host revenue-generating activities.

Our forestry-qualified Head of Woodlands works with the community to design and help deliver a woodland management plan based on the history and future of your specific local landscape.

Our scientific, natural capital, and social value partners help each project to map and assess the detailed characteristics of the land acquired. They return at least each year to produce longitudinal assessments of progress across an array of metrics including above and below ground plant and animal biodiversity, soil, water and air quality, and the local social and economic value being developed through the project.

We continue as partners and supporters, offering expertise for any aspect of land or community enterprise management, from ourselves or our partners, for as long as needed. This might be for 5, 10, 15 years or more, according to local preferences and needs.

Once the landscape is measurably on course to restoration and flourishing, subsequent share issues offer the opportunity for investors who helped the initial acquisition to happen to step down, and make their shares available for other local people or supporters more widely to join. Woodland Savers can either hand over at this point or remain if further participation is welcomed locally.