Blogger: Gena Correale-Wardle, Senior Community Fundraiser
Have you seen our RSPB pin badge boxes in your local area? The little green boxes perch on counters in garden centres, coffee shops, hotels and pubs, proudly displaying their lovely enamel wares. For the suggested donation of £1 you can be the proud owner of one of over 50 current badge designs from tawny owl to killer whales.
These fabulous little badges do more for conservation than just letting people show their support for the RSPB by wearing their favourite species. The money generated from these lovely badges in their little boxes is a serious amount. Last year, across the whole of the UK, we raised £694,501 from pin badges. This money covers areas that we can’t traditionally get funding for, whether it’s for creating homes for otters on our reserves, providing bug hotels for children to make at one of our events or paying the running costs of our visitor toilet facilities! RSPB wouldn’t be able to achieve as much as it does without this money coming in.
In Eastern England we raised over £86,000 from pin badges last year and we are lucky enough to have around 350 long-term volunteers who service our pin badge boxes once a month to top up the boxes, collect the money and bank it for us.
We are always looking for fresh locations for our pin badge boxes and new volunteers to join our pin badge family, so if you have a bright idea for a site that would be good or would like to have a round of boxes yourself, please get in touch. The money you collect from looking after these boxes makes a real difference and amounts to such a large figure – all those £1s work together to make sure we can continue to give nature a home.
Get in touch with Matt Howard with your pin badge ideas or to find out more. Matt.Howard@rspb.org.uk or 01603 697515.