Community efforts to tackle nature’s recovery get triple funding boost - The Wildlife Trusts

Applications now open to bigger-than-ever Green Community Grants Programme

The support available to communities to tackle nature’s recovery where they live has tripled thanks to a successful pilot and increased roll-out of the Green Community Grants Programme.

The grant programme is now fully fledged and able to support community-led groups to restore nature, tackle climate change and improve access to green places in their local area. The grants award up to £25,000 to small charities and not-for-profit groups and will now be available at greater scale than ever before with three times the amount of community initiatives to be funded in 2026.

In the 2025 pilot 35 grassroots projects were awarded funding, with action for wildlife, natural spaces and communities already taking place as a result. These include:

• A youth group in Cardigan, Wales, where young people are learning new skills through species recording and habitat creation.
• The expansion of a carbon literacy programme to school children in the West Midlands and South East, enabling children to gain the confidence and motivation to take meaningful climate action and embedding sustainable behaviour change in local schools, homes, and communities.
• A community mushroom farm in North Edinburgh working to grow and distribute more locally grown mushrooms into the area, with foraging and ID courses to help people to connect with the world of mushrooms and fungi.