mysteriously appear out of thin air, and that effective and talented staff are a luxury. Our 7 members of staff have worked with nearly 1,000 adults and children in the past 2 years alone illustrating the domino effect of good employees."

"And a new funding fashion which has appeared over the past few years is the demand for applications to be for new projects. This really grinds us down as it takes many years to turn land into good wildlife habitat and to tackle environmental problems so it seems ridiculous to say that a project isn’t worth funding just because it’s a year or two old. We consistently meet our targets, the people we work with say that we do a fabulous job, you can see with your own eyes the positive difference that our work is making. Yet this seems to count for nothing to many prospective funders. We wonder sometimes what is the point of doing a good job, other than the fact that we want to do it for the people we’re working with."

Caroline continued "Those of us who work in the charitable sector do so because we want to make a difference, not spend our time writing bids and then preparing the huge amount of paperwork that funders demand once you have a grant to check that you’re doing the work. Some funders want you to send photocopies of every purchase a project has made which is over £50 as well as detailed work reports. It’s an absolutely crazy way to run the charitable world. If I was being cynical, I’d say that if the powers that be wanted to appear to support worthy causes and improving society, but actually wanted to prevent it as much as possible, then they’d invent the funding system that we’ve got at the moment."

Caroline decided when she was 13 years old that she wanted to work in wildlife conservation. She began working in the environmental movement when the vast majority of people didn’t have a clue what it was about. "When people asked me what I did for a living, I usually lied as they either thought I worked on a Greenpeace anti-whaling ship or was just plain weird."

"I’m very sad to go, but after 13 years I don’t have the energy any more for all this funding game. Not to mention the amount of work caused by meeting the legislative system for employment law, health and safety, company law, and similar, which for a charity employing only 7 people takes up a significant amount of time."

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