Environmental campaign group becomes charity (in three days)

AN environmental group in Henley has achieved charitable status.

Greener Henley applied for the registration so it could “reach a wider community” as well as increase its ability to fundraise.

The group held its annual meeting in December where more than 40 members approved its registration.

Mike Barry, the former head of sustainability at Marks & Spencer, Giles Trendle, former managing director of Al Jazeera English and Ian Gethin, who has experience in finance and charities, are among the new trustees.

Kate Oldridge, who chairs the group, said securing charitable status puts it in a stronger position with funding applications and has streamlined its governance and operations.

She said: “I was so shocked when I found out that I had to read it about 10 times. We were accepted within three days of submitting the application. We never anticipated that it would be that quick and now that we’ve got it we can storm ahead with fundraising.

“We are in a much stronger position and we can build up our resources in terms of the people we have on board as we now have the credibility and reassurance that comes along with charity status.

“It signifies a new chapter in the life of Greener Henley and it’s enabling us to be able to ramp up our efforts and bring in a new audience because we need to encourage very large numbers of people to take action in the community.

“The only way we can do this is by increasing the level of resources that we’ve got. We just don’t have enough capacity at the moment to do what we need to do in order to bring in those extra members.

“The changes we need to happen won’t happen unless we’re driven up from the grassroots level. We believe that we can model change, that we can model community climate and nature action in the town. We’re in a strong position to be able to do that because we have incredible talent here in Henley.”

In the last three years, Ms Oldridge said the community support has grown. She said: “We have now got more than 1,000 people receiving our newsletter and we had lots of people take part in Great Big Green Week. The award of charity status will now enable us to tap into the necessary resources to scale up our impact to help Henley thrive, build resilience and inspire other communities.

“The enabling group within Greener Henley has been working on this for the last year and seeking advice from a number of professional people locally who have worked in the charity sector to explore whether it was the right thing for us. As we’ve gone along with that we’ve become certain that this is the right thing to do.”

Secretary Diana Barnett said: “We really needed more funds to help us with lots of things we do, such as Great Big Green Week, which is a huge undertaking.

“We can now apply for grants from the town council where we weren’t able to do before we became a registered charity. Up until now, we’ve relied on volunteers and there is an awful lot of work to do. We will now be more efficient with financial backing.

“To be able to pay for our services and get our word out comes at a cost. We do need to grow substantially and to do that we have to attract more and more people.”

In November, Greener Henley launched its first science fair for schools and colleges in the Henley area and they also held the first Nature Discovery Day in June as part of Great Big Green Week.

Ms Barnett hopes the charity recognition will help propel these events and put in more funding for events this year.

She said: “A lot of good things have happened this year. We did citizen science events and I was so pleased with the people who turned up to help us. Now we can start fundraising in earnest to help us provide what we want to do for the town.”

Three more trustees, Harriet Barcella, host of Henley Female Network, Kate Miller, chief communications officer of the England and Wales Cricket Board and Richard Winder, head of sustainability at Handelsbanken UK will be appointed on January 27.