500 paid Substack subscribers! Thank you.

With every penny going into our Equipment Fund you're helping us make a real difference...

Now here’s some good news we’ve been looking forward to announcing (because you don’t keep quiet when you reach substantial milestones like this): Protect the Wild now has 500 paid subscribers here on Substack.

That’s right. Five hundred. And every single penny we’re raising through those 500 subscriptions is going straight into our Equipment Fund - putting ‘eyes in the field’ and empowering people to protect British wildlife.

Keeping three promises

When we launched our substack just six months ago - which is hard to imagine given that our news and opinion pieces are now being viewed 900 thousand times a month! - we promised to never put our content behind a paywall. As an organisation we knew we’d be less effective if we put a barrier between the information we use to make a difference for wildlife and the very people who help us make the changes we want to see.

Besides which, these are difficult economic times for many of us. No, we made a promise that our content will always be freely available for anyone who wants to read it, and we have kept it. No paywall, no barrier. Not now, not ever.

However, what Substack did give us was an option - and we stress ‘option’ - to collect paid subscriptions. With our ‘transparency hat’ firmly in place, this was one of the reasons we moved so much of our output onto Substack. The platform is essentially a modern blend of blog and newsletter with that voluntary option of paid subs built in.

But why should anyone pay to read what we write? Leaving aside the fact that we think what we write is actually rather good (we don’t often blow our own trumpets, but we must be doing something right to have so many readers), we made another promise. Any paid subs would be ringfenced and put into our Protecting the Wild Equipment Fund - putting ‘eyes in the field’ and empowering people to protect British wildlife.

And that’s exactly what we’ve done.

Since August we have given equipment like radios, bodycams, video recorders - even a drone - to thirteen different groups. You can read about them all at /equipment-fund/ because that was the third promise we made - we would always let you know where your money was going and how it was helping.

500 and counting

As the number of our subscribers has steadily climbed, the amount of money going into the Equipment fund ‘pot’ each month is climbing too. Substack takes a small percentage in fees (which is fair enough given the complexity of running their platform) but we are now seeing around £1400/month coming to us.

That’s a lot of money, though of course the kit we provide isn’t cheap or groups would be able to buy it themselves!

We are not resting on our laurels of course. Your support for this idea of ours has got us planning something we think will be even more beneficial for the groups we support - and of course for the wildlife they work so selflessly to protect.

We can’t discuss it quite yet because we’re currently circulating a discussion document among some of the groups we’ve funded outlining what we’re proposing to see what they think - but we’ll make a fourth promise right now: as soon as we can lay everything out we will. We can say though that the feedback has been very good so far!

It will still involve paid subs, still involve the equipment fund, and there will still be absolute transparency - but (if groups like our idea) with your ongoing help it will give the groups we work with additional support to plan ahead and feel a little more financially secure…

It’s very exciting - but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We were talking about milestones, and 500 paid subscriptions is a milestone and one we’re very encouraged by. It represents the faith you have in us to deliver and to keep our word. That is something we’ll never take for granted.

But that’s not really the point. In a few months time hopefully we’ll be talking about reaching the next milestone, then the one after that…but as we wrote just a few weeks ago (and it summed everything up nicely then, so why not recycle it again now), your support of the Equipment Fund is so much more than what you think about us - it’s about helping real people protect real animals. It’s about making a real difference on the ground where it matters most.

That’s a wonderful thing for activists like us to be able to say and to be a part of - so thank you, all of you, and let’s just see the difference we can make TOGETHER in 2024.

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Help us reach the next milestone!

Our content is free but if you choose to take out a paid subscription you’ll be helping activists on the ground take direct action to protect wildlife. Every penny we receive tops up our Equipment Fund to support those in the field. We currently have an amazing 500 of you on paid subscriptions helping fund the above, can you help us reach our next milestone?