Earth Action North Devon: Funding Beyond Grants

Earth Action North Devon (EAND) is a local charity (Reg No: 1182464) on a mission to protect and improve our environment through community action.

We launched with a simple aim: to tackle plastic pollution head-on by raising awareness, reducing consumption and clearing waste from the environment. Our remit has since evolved and expanded. Through education, events, campaigns and networks, today we’re dedicated to inspiring reconnection with nature, driving sustainable behaviour change and accelerating environmental action across North Devon to foster a healthier relationship between people and the natural world.

That growth has also meant thinking differently about how we fund our work and how we build a financially resilient organisation.

Why did you start thinking about making an income/exploring different ways to bring money in?

Like many small charities, grant funding was an important part of our early growth and remains an important source of income for us. However, we recognised the risks of relying too heavily on a single source of funding, and knew we needed to develop an income portfolio which included other income streams alongside grants.

Grant funding can be competitive and is often restricted to particular projects or periods of delivery. That can make it harder to fund the core capacity, infrastructure and development work that our growing charity needed. We therefore wanted to develop more unrestricted income alongside our grant funding and build relationships with people and organisations who might support us over the longer term.

At the same time, opportunities were beginning to emerge organically. Following our Plastic Free Communities work, we developed strong relationships with local businesses across North Devon. We supported many of them to take environmental action themselves, and some began approaching us wanting to support our work in return. We could see that there was an opportunity to build on those existing relationships rather than always looking externally for the next funding opportunity.

Becoming a charity in 2019 also prompted a wider conversation about long-term growth and resilience. We were still a very small organisation, but there was a lot of interest in our work from businesses and the local community. Through building these connections, interest and partnerships, we started to think more intentionally how we could turn that engagement into a broader base of support that could help sustain us and unlock further opportunities for collaboration, impact and growth.

How did your approach develop?

Our approach to fundraising, income diversification, and financial planning developed gradually over several years. Some of the earliest opportunities came through our relationships with businesses. The connections created through our environmental campaigns gave us a natural starting point because businesses already knew us, trusted us and understood our work. This evolved into a more structured business partnerships offer, which has now evolved into the Business Impact Network, and gave us early experience of generating income outside traditional grant funding.

Another significant step was taking ownership of the Croyde Ocean Triathlon in 2022. It has since developed into our flagship fundraising event. The event generates income in its own right, but it also creates opportunities for participant fundraising, sponsorship, business partnerships and community engagement, while introducing new audiences to the charity.

The Triathlon is a good example of how diversification can build on an existing opportunity rather than starting something completely new, and how this approach often leads to a better return on investment. We focused deliberately on the different assets we already had, such as a strong local profile, trusted relationships with businesses and communities, an established flagship event, engaged supporters and a cause that people felt personally connected to.

Rather than creating lots of completely new fundraising activity, we focused on where people were already engaging with us, and how we could make it easier for them to deepen that support.

When did income diversification become more strategic?

By early 2026, strong foundations were in place. We’d developed a diverse income model more and felt there was enough potential to justify investing in dedicated fundraising capacity. We recruited our first fundraising post, with a particular focus on developing unrestricted income. The initial priorities are focused on the following:

build on the relationships and learning generated through our Business Supporters work;

maximise fundraising, sponsorship and income generating opportunities through the Croyde Ocean Triathlon;

Develop an individual giving income stream, including launching our first dedicated individual giving campaign in autumn 2026;

Develop our internal systems and continue learning which approaches have the greatest potential before investing in further areas.

This was an important shift for us. Rather than diversification being something that happened alongside everyone’s other responsibilities, we were beginning to develop a more deliberate and coordinated fundraising approach through targeted investment in fundraising to maximise on existing opportunities.

How is it going and what have you learnt?

Our income diversification is a work in progress, and we’ve learnt that it takes time. Creating an income stream is only part of the job, you also need the systems, communications and capacity to manage it well and enable consistency as you grow.

We’ve also learnt not to confuse diversification with simply doing more fundraising activity. For a small charity, launching five new fundraising ideas at once can easily result in five things being done without enough capacity and with reduced impact. Our current approach is therefore to maximise the opportunities and relationships we already have, test approaches, learn what works and then invest more in the areas showing the greatest potential.

We’ve also learnt that different income streams can reinforce one another. A business may first encounter us through a campaign or event and later become a financial supporter. Someone may take part in the Triathlon, fundraise for us and subsequently become a regular donor. An event can raise money directly while also building awareness and creating new relationships.

Thinking about the whole supporter journey, rather than treating grants, businesses, events and individual donors as completely separate activities, is becoming increasingly important to our approach.

What’s next?

Our next phase is about continuing to strengthen the income streams we have already developed, while using what we learn to decide what comes next. We want to deepen our relationships with businesses, launch and grow individual giving, continue increasing the fundraising and profit potential of the Croyde Ocean Triathlon, and maintain a strong and appropriate grants pipeline.

A key next step is to launch our individual giving programme. We already have people who follow our work, attend activities, volunteer, participate in events or support our campaigns. Our next step is to make donating another simple way for those people to be involved, beginning with a dedicated campaign this autumn.

The aim isn’t for every supporter to engage in every way. It is to create a range of routes into supporting EAND and, over time, build stronger and longer-term relationships. We are particularly interested in increasing unrestricted income, as it gives us greater flexibility to respond to opportunities, invest in organisational capacity and cover the essential costs that are not always easy to fund through restricted grants.

There will undoubtedly be further opportunities. However, we want to develop them based on evidence and learning rather than simply adding more activity. Each year gives us more information about what resonates with our supporters, what generates a worthwhile return and where our limited capacity is best invested. The intention is to use that learning to refine our approach year by year.

The goal is to create a healthier mix of income, supported by strong systems, so that EAND is less vulnerable to changes in any one funding source and has greater freedom to plan, invest and respond to the environmental needs of our community.

Curious about how to make more money for your community group?

Check out Proper Job’s Income Diversification Toolkit here.