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Start or fund a project

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Start or fund a project

This section is designed for people starting community conservation projects or those who want to improve existing ones. It provides advice about establishing, maintaining, improving and evaluating projects, particularly those involving partnerships.

Funding

Find out about funding sources for community groups and landowners including Nga Whenua Rahui, biodiversity funds, Nature Heritage Fund plus links to other funding organisations.

Principles of successful projects

Successful community conservation projects tend to reflect three key principles - planning, partnership and learning.

Get started

Find out how to get your project off to a great start by doing some initial thinking and research, identifying who to involve, finding out what people think and holding a project meeting.

Set your direction

Once your group is established, there will be a point at which you will need to do some planning. With a good plan your activity will have a greater chance of being effective.

Work well as a group

Once you have decided to form a group to start a project, it is important to look at how the group will run and how members will work together.

Monitor and evaluate progress

Having ways to check on your progress (monitoring) and take stock of where things are at on a regular basis (evaluation), are important for your group to function effectively.

Assess the impact of the project

All programmes should take into account the impact their proposed work will have on natural, cultural and historic conservation values.

Find out more

Publications

From Seed to Success - Guidelines - advice about establishing, maintaining, improving and evaluating community conservation projects.

From Seed to Success - Tool Kit - information on facilitating effective meetings, consulting with others and more.

Urban greening manual: How to put nature into our neighbourhoods - Manaaki Whenua site

Conservation volunteers calendar 2012

Learn more

Community Resource Kit is a practical 'hands-on' resource to help community groups get up and running. It has practical resources on a range of topics.

Contacts

To find out how you can get involved in conservation activities near you, contact your local DOC office