Successful completion of 2022 Crowdfunding!
When we launched our crowdfunding campaign on Christmas Eve 2021 we were not entirely sure what to expect. Over the years we have received endless words of encouragement and appreciation. However, asking people to match that appreciation with financial contributions is something else, and past attempts to raise donations have not been as successful as we hoped. Nevertheless, believing in the value of our work, realising that we had little other funding options left, and counting on the generosity of the birdwatching community, we decided to set an ambitious goal: to raise 20.000EUR before the call for volunteers would be published. Now, we are very happy and proud to say that we did even better! We raised over 23.000EUR in a little over 3 months. Added to our reserves from 2021 means we currently have 28.840EUR to invest in raptor monitoring in Batumi. What a delight!
The whole crowdfunding endeavour has been hugely exciting to the BRC team. As soon as we published the crowdfunding campaign donations started streaming in, and by 29 Dec we had crossed the mark of 10.000EUR. This was probably the moment when many team members started to believe we could really reach our ambitious 20K target. By mid-February the counter stood at 16K. At that point the rate at which donations were coming did slow down a lot. Fortunately, however, we still had an ace up our sleeves...
Behind the scenes OSME had taken notice of our efforts, and kindly offered to match up to 2K in donations to help boost the crowdfunding. We cooked up a plan to launch a joint campaign on March 1st, the day that our 3rd and final spring count started (also funded by OSME btw!). A few days before that the war in Ukraine started. Nevertheless, we decided to stick to our plan. After all, and as we wrote before, projects like the BRC, where people from all creeds come together to work towards a common goal, and form friendships across cultural and national borders, are precisely what’s needed to help build a peaceful future in this crazy world.
The response to our joint campaign with OSME was amazing. By March 8th we hit the 20K target, and donations kept coming in even after that! Swarovski Optik pitched in with a donation of 1000EUR, and we were informed that around 2000EUR of donations had arrived to our project account at Natuurpunt, which facilitates tax-deductible donations for our Belgian supporters.
All together we now have 28.000EUR in reserves, plenty to fund the 2022 autumn count, and nearly half of the budget we’ll need for 2023. The enthusiastic response to our crowdfunding campaign has made us feel hugely supported by the international birdwatching community, and we hope we will be able to rely on that support in years to come. After all, and despite ongoing efforts to secure more structural funding, our monitoring work will continue to depend on your generous support for the foreseeable future.
That said, thanks to your support the immediate future looks bright, and we are excited we’ll be able to organise another outstanding count with many old-time counters and new volunteers next autumn. Didi madloba!
Donation Doubling Days!
Dear friends and followers of BRC,
Today – March 1st 2022 – marks the start of our 3rd and final spring count in Batumi. A historic day, which also marks the start of our final sprint to complete the crowdfunding for the BRC autumn count of 2022. Of course, it feels strange to make this announcement while Ukraine is suffering an invasion from the same aggressor that invaded Georgia during the summer of the first Batumi Raptor Count in 2008. However, it is precisely by celebrating our common values, such as the love for nature and birds, that we can create strong friendships across national and cultural borders, and build a more peaceful future.
Since we started our campaign late December, we have been fortunate to receive 192 donations totalling 17.200EUR. That means we are tantalisingly close to reaching our 20.000EUR target. Close … but no count just yet!
In order to help us reach our fundraising target, our long-time friends at the Ornithological Society of the Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia (OSME) now generously offered to match all donations made between March 1st – 15th, up to a total of 2000EUR!
In other words: by making a donation in the coming days, you can make every euro you donate count double! More than ever, now is the time to step up and support your favourite raptor migration project.
The BRC community already showed great strength by helping us get so far in our crowdfunding efforts. But we do need to reach the 20K target in order to continue our long-term raptor migration monitoring in Georgia – which offers a unique tool to monitor raptor populations in the East African-Eurasian flyway, and remains the backbone for all the other good work we do in Georgia. The sooner we reach our fundraising target, the sooner we can guarantee the autumn count for 2022, and the more energy and time we can invest in additional efforts to counter raptor persecution in Georgia.
Yours in raptor research and conservation, for the love of birds and people,
The Batumi Raptor Count team
World-class migration monitoring at Batumi soars or falls with your support!
Dear raptor enthusiast,
Over the past years we have been getting more and more surprised reactions from volunteers and visitors about the fact that Batumi Raptor Count is a 100% volunteer-based organisation. “How can it be that this world-class migration count is run by people in their spare time?” And they are right to be surprised! The fact of the matter is that our monitoring work is of extraordinary quality, delivering unique data to detect trends in the abundance, demography and migration timing of otherwise poorly known raptor populations. Our open and transparent data collection and sharing procedures far exceed common standards for bird observatories worldwide. At the same time we have provided numerous young people from around the world with life-changing and career-defining experiences in raptor research and conservation. Our migration counts and physical presence in Georgia also serve as the platform from which we have run numerous education and conservation projects in the past.
For thirteen years we have managed to keep the counts going without big crowdfunding efforts. However, despite the fact that long-term monitoring is critical to understand how bird populations are faring in our rapidly changing world, structural funding for monitoring schemes such as ours is very hard, if not impossible, to find. Until now we have been able to get by on grassroots conservation grants, support from loyal sponsors like Swarovski Optik and OSME, t-shirt sales, donations from ecotourism operators and members of the public, and last but not least: thousands of hours of unpaid work by 395 volunteers from dozens of countries. However, times are a changin, and now that BRC is entering its 14th year of continued monitoring efforts the moment has come to tell you loud and clear: the Batumi Raptor Count soars or falls with your support. The best way to ensure our world-class monitoring work can continue is to donate generously to our charitable cause!
Asking for money is never fun. But we believe we have earned our place as a respectable, reliable, and resilient organisation that helps make the world a better place for raptors. So here is the deal: we need 20.000EUR per year to run our autumn count, and the only way we have left to get it is by asking for your support. If we do not get the required amount before June 2022, there will not be a raptor count in Georgia next autumn. However, given our large international base of supporters and followers, we believe it should be possible to raise this amount through an annual crowdfunding campaign, the first of which will run from Dec 2021 through May 2022.
On the crowdfunding page you will find more details on what the money will be used for exactly. On average, 200EUR funds one day of high-quality counts. With 130EUR you fund a one-week participation of a young Georgian conservationist. So what are you waiting for? Please, help us circulate this message widely, and let’s get the funds we need asap. The sooner we get our budgets together, the better our team can focus on organizing a high-quality count, producing important research, and organising valuable education and conservation work in parallel to the counts, instead of wasting our time competing with other conservation groups for small grants. Your donation makes a massive difference to us, and you know we’ll use it wisely!
Warm wishes,
Batumi Raptor Count team