We're providing £750 for every new Green Impact partnership your union sets up in the local community.

Since its inception in 2006 Green Impact has been enabling and supporting students' unions to understand and improve their impacts on their campuses as well as in their communities.

As we enter the 10th year of the programme, we've heard more and more unions tell us that they want to increase the scope of their sustainability work - taking it from getting their own house in order to broader, measurable impacts.

A number of unions already support Green Impact's delivery in partnership with organisations local to their campus. This brings about a number of benefits:

• Develops positive relationships with organisations local to the students' union - this could be the local student housing provider, the local authority, or a local big-business;
• Enables to union to provide practical education for sustainable development (ESD) opportunities for their students;
• Provides students with training, development and practical work experience that they don't get elsewhere;
• The off-the-shelf programme provides measurable outcomes - both in sustainability terms for the organisations and in impact terms for the students involved;
• Reaches typically 'hard-to-reach' students including international, mature and post-graduate students who are then more likely to engage with the union on other activities;
• Creates news stories that help raise the profile of the union and its students as positive change makers in the local community;
• The support of a dedicated NUS project officer to facilitate the delivery of the programme.

To support our members in this transformative work, NUS is providing £750 for every new partnership a union develops in their community.

This will enhance sustainability budgets and help meet any costs associated with supporting the programme (staff time, communications, travel, student recruitment etc.) There is no limit to the number of organisations a union can work with - so multiples of £750 are available.

To be eligible, a union needs to:

• Have identified an organisation suitable for running with Green Impact that has not run the programme before, and has formally committed to running the programme, including covering its costs. Experience shows Green Impact works best in large (250+ staff members) organisations with some internal staff resource to support the programme. Funding is available for the first year/cycle of the programme only.
• Liaise with NUS to ensure a project proposal has been agreed between all parties.
• Be willing to support the student volunteer engagement elements of the programme's delivery.

Email us about starting a partnership in your community or call Charlotte Bonner on 07785 626163.