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What 1% means to The Birch Collective CIC

July 20, 2026

Nature-based mental health support for Bristol’s young people

The Birch Collective is a Bristol-based, trauma-informed organisation delivering long-term, nature-based mental health and wellbeing programmes – primarily for 16 to 25 year olds facing mental ill-health, social isolation and structural disadvantage. Its programmes build resilience, develop transferable skills, and cultivate a genuine sense of belonging through meaningful engagement with the natural world.

The need is significant: 40% of the young people The Birch Collective works with are classified as NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training). With a small core team of just 4.2 full-time equivalent staff, the organisation supports 350 people a year, offering some of the city’s most vulnerable young people an accessible route back into connection, confidence and opportunity.

Z’s story: from isolation to belonging

Z’s experience shows exactly what that work looks like in practice. Autistic and NEET, Z came to The Birch Collective at a time of real isolation, spending much of his time alone, with his college attendance dropping off and little else engaging him.

Since starting the Seeding Change programme in early September, Z has achieved 100% attendance at college. During sessions, he felt comfortable enough to speak openly about being autistic, a moment that mattered not just for him, but for the whole group. It helped him recognise how well he understood his own needs, and gave him the confidence to express that to others. He’s been coming every week since, and it’s become a steady, trusted part of his routine – somewhere he feels welcome, connected and understood.

Z’s story reflects a wider pattern The Birch Collective is seeing across its work: 100% of participants who completed a follow-up feedback form about Seeding Change agreed or strongly agreed that they had made new connections to others since attending. Z’s journey shows how those connections can translate into real, lasting change – socially, educationally, and in overall wellbeing.

The challenge: doing vital work on a shoestring

Behind this impact sits an organisation working extremely hard to stay financially afloat. Staffing costs continue to climb, and like much of the sector, The Birch Collective’s income simply isn’t keeping pace. To try to close the gap, the team has poured significant financial and organisational resource into a crowdfunding campaign aiming to secure £40k of unrestricted grant income – a hopeful step, but a risky and capacity-intensive one for an organisation this size to take on.

The picture for reserves is uncertain but concerning: The Birch Collective says it’s “quite likely” it will need to dip into free reserves to cover running costs this year or next. The knock-on effect isn’t just short-term – it directly hampers the organisation’s plans to invest in the capacity needed to grow its traded income and build genuine long-term financial resilience, trapping it in a cycle of short-term survival rather than sustainable growth.

The Birch Collective describes the current trust and foundation funding environment in blunt terms: “brutally competitive and hugely time consuming to work within.” For a team of just over four people, the hours spent chasing funding are hours not spent on delivering support to young people like Z.

The human cost is real too. The organisation is candid that financial instability has taken a toll on its team, with stress levels running high – particularly for those carrying the responsibility of simply keeping the doors open.

Why local business backing matters

The Birch Collective sees We Back Bristol as a genuinely values-led way to address a structural gap. As statutory funding has been stripped back across many sectors, third sector organisations like The Birch Collective have stepped in to replace services the public sector once provided — without the funding to match. Corporate contribution, delivered as flexible, unrestricted income, doesn’t just plug that gap; it actively redistributes wealth toward the people in Bristol with the greatest need, from those who have a little more to give.

That’s precisely the model We Back Bristol is built on: local businesses, giving 1% of revenue, providing exactly the kind of unrestricted, reliable funding that lets small, high-impact organisations like The Birch Collective spend less time firefighting and more time doing the work that changes lives.

The bigger picture

The Birch Collective is proof of what’s possible when a small, dedicated team is given the trust and resource to do specialist work well – turning isolation into belonging, and school absence into 100% attendance, for young people who might otherwise fall through the gaps. Yet even with a growing evidence base and a clear community need, an organisation delivering this level of impact is having to gamble organisational capacity on a crowdfunding campaign just to stay financially stable.

This is exactly the innovative, sustainable model We Back Bristol wants to build across the city: connecting brilliant, high-impact organisations like The Birch Collective with reliable, long-term local business support – so that specialist work like this doesn’t depend on chance, but on a collective, city-wide commitment to Bristol’s future.

Imagine if every business gave 1%.