Opportunities for businesses to work on projects in partnership with 9Trees
Short overview of 9Trees Projects
These are the projects that we are currently working on, or ideas that we are developing and together they will move 9Trees forward towards our long-term vision. We would love to work with you to deliver some of these projects so that we can learn together.
You could really help us to get some of these really exciting projects properly off the ground:
● ‘Your Business name here’ supporting: Biodiversity / jobs / tree nurseries / Upland trees
This could happen a few ways:
1. More than just personal trees
We want to do more than just planting individual trees for people to balance their carbon footprint. We want people to be able to create whole woodlands, stretches of new hedgerows and shelterbelts that connect and create wildlife corridors.
The 9Trees team are looking at adding a new item in the shop very soon so that people can pay for planting a metre of hedgerow plants. This project will identify the techniques that we would use to establish hedgerows, shelter-belts and wildlife-corridors, and would complete the necessary work on the website to allow supporters to purchase this option. We may also be able to plant a short stretch of hedgerow as a ‘test-case’ to make sure that the strategy works.
Project Cost: £2000
2. Balance more than just 9 trees a year
Because the impacts of climate change are real and happening now; we want to be able to offer people, who can afford to do so, the ability to balance their historical and future carbon footprints all in one go.
They can then continue to plant trees with us yearly knowing that they are doing something positive for the planet, local wildlife and local communities.
To offer this project, in the way that we would like, we need to develop our website further so that people can fully understand how many trees they need to plant to balance their historical footprint.
The website would need some work in the background work and this type of product offering would mean creating new content, like certificates.
We would add more educational pages onto our website, along with blogs etc. to do all of this. We need to fund the time and resources needed to get this up and running efficiently. We already have the knowledge needed to do this effectively from running our standard 9 trees per year offering.
Cost: £5000
3. Support a conservation job - Have a big impact!
To put it bluntly the biggest impact you could have on 9Trees CIC is to support a conservation job. Currently 9Trees CIC is being entirely run by volunteers, including the two directors. This is allowing us to pour all our money back into tree planting / fencing / survey work.
By supporting a conservation role for 18 months we would be able to deliver some of the projects on this list but also push 9Trees to the next stage so that we can grow, realise our vision and build our team further by starting to offer part-time and full time work.
We know where we want to be and we have shown that the concept of 9Trees works; we also know that individuals, landowners and businesses all like and support the way we work. We can get things done quickly and effectively.
One of our key objectives of 9trees is to create more jobs for people within the countryside sector.
We are working towards getting young people working with us through the government's Kickstarter scheme and having help from you would mean we can move our projects along; whilst supporting young people.
Cost: Sponsor a job for 1+ years; starting from £27000 depending on the role.
Speak to us about how we can work together and how your business can do more than plant trees.
4. Micro Nurseries & local provenance - help us grow trees!!
We need more trees being grown in the UK from tree seeds that are in the UK. Many of the UK tree nurseries are importing trees from Europe and this has brought in many of the new tree diseases that are and will have a huge impact on our mature native species.
We already have a voluntary nursery coordinator in place who is a registered seed collector and is already growing trees in 1 nursery and has 2 growing on sites. After the growing on stage the trees can go to our local planting sites. In particular these trees will be used for our Wood the Uplands / Fridd in Wales.
The most important aspect of this is that the seed is local; grown and planted locally. This means that these trees are more likely to survive and more likely to be able to adapt to local changes in climate.
Many of our upland areas have lost the diverse seed bank that would have once existed or if it remains, germination isn’t happening and planting trees is the only way to get woods back to areas that should have trees.
This all plays an important role in flood risk management, wildlife habitat and a resource for local communities. We have the knowledge and expertise to realise our vision of micro nurseries across the UK and using our networks of people to grow trees would change the way tree planting happens and secure the UK seed bank for future generations.
A small cash injection at this stage would mean we can dedicate more time to this project. The cost below would mean we can really push this project forward.
Cost £2000
5. Our biodiversity fund
We aren’t just about planting trees; this is about creating biodiverse habitats that benefit people and wildlife. As our trees grow, they will support different species and different sites lend themselves to different enhancement projects.
We can make some immediate biodiversity enhancements, for example:
● Pond creation
● Wildflower seeding
● Woodland bulb planting
● Bird boxes
● Bat boxes
For a business to support us with our biodiversity fund there would be amazing opportunities for marketing and education pieces around why these enhancements are important and how they fit into the wider landscape.
Cost: Starting at £500 and increasing depending on the type and scale of the work/project
6. Upland / Fridd Wales Tree planting
We are working with a few different landowners and organisations around getting more trees into our upland spaces. These are large scale landscape projects. The difficulty with this is the cost; not all upland sites lend themselves to planting a typical woodland. Some require us to plant trees sporadically across large areas to target specific endangered bird species.
This means the cost of planting a tree is much higher and the cost to protect it from grazing harder and more expensive. But we need more trees in our upland areas, to benefit wildlife, the animals that graze the land and for flood mitigation.
We have an amazing tree planter ready to get trees planted into these hard-to-reach places; we just need to trial the ideas we have around getting more trees into these locations.
Cost: £2000 - £5000
7. Research Partners - Fungi - soil - trees - increase carbon sequestration!
If you are interested in helping us improve our tree planting operations by decreasing sapling mortality, increase carbon sequestration and increasing the resilience of trees then this is the project for you.
We will be utilising the woodland microbiome to achieve this by planting a capsule containing some of the local soil fungi that has been collected by Deep Science Ventures.
We are working with them on a number of trials around the use of soil fungi and if you and or your business are interested in supporting this work, we can introduce you to the researchers and we can consider further funding opportunities with you. The topic of soil fungi and their role in ecosystem maintenance and soil health are poorly understood so there is a wealth of research opportunities which will help us to learn about the most fundamental part of the natural world.
These trials will initially increase our planting costs but over the longer term it is hoped that the cost of replanting saplings will decrease. With the prospect of establishing a woodland quicker this is a low cost project with massive gains.
Cost: £500 + or speak to us about sponsoring a site
8. Community Impact Fund
As we establish more woodlands in the UK we will be engaging the local community and local schools. This will be around what we are doing and why, and getting them involved with the ongoing management, wildlife surveys, talks, practical tasks and endless more education and engagement possibilities.
We need funds to develop this project and get the right person employed to drive forward our education and engagement vision as we engage with existing community groups and organisations to help facilitate action within each local community.
We will be able to create content, collaborate with other organisations to build and deliver our program.
Cost: starting from £500
9. Land purchase project
We have an exciting project where we are working with an individual who is passionate about wildlife and community engagement. They want to do their bit towards climate change and are purchasing a large parcel of land in South Wales.
This area of land will be transformed away from pure sheep grazing to create a mosaic of habitats that benefit people and wildlife.
We will be starting from scratch and will require full ecological surveys to obtain baseline data and then ongoing surveys year after year to monitor the impact of the tree planting for carbon storage and biodiversity.
This project will require a project manager to dedicate a large amount of time to getting the vision of this project delivered. There will be many aspects that will need coordination, including the scale of the surveys we require, habitat enhancements such as ponds, fencing, tree planting, ongoing maintenance, graziers and engagement with the local community.
Any amount of money donated to this fund will be greatly appreciated but to have the biggest impact on this project we would ideally be looking for donations of:
Cost: £1000 +
10. Sponsor us to go to these events
Sponsor us for these upcoming events in 2024 and drop us an email to get involved in the excitement!
Cost: £1000 per event
11. Schools Programme - Trial Project and Feasibility Study
Email us to get involved today!
Cost: £2000
What’s in it for you if you support one of these projects?
Perks include (dependent on funds received)
• Bespoke projects, specified to meet your needs; you let us know what you would like
• Pictures during and at the end of the project – maybe we could do some time-lapse photography?
• You and your team may be able to visit your site
• We will work with you on celebratory paragraph for your LinkedIn page or your website to promote the excellent work we have done together
• We can deliver a training session for your staff to tell them all about woodland creation and habitat improvements
• If you like, we can deliver a Presentation to celebrate the project
• We can include your business name/logo on our website, but we can also pop it on benches and styles in the woodland.
All your funding helps support people and the environment and if you wish for your donation to remain anonymous, please just let us know and we can thank you as an anonymous donor at our annual meeting.
