About the
British Trust for Ornithology

Funding the BTO’s work

Membership subscriptions and donations from private individuals and charitable trusts made the establishment of the BTO possible and still provide vital core funding that underwrites much of our work today. Membership of the Trust is open to all and is a really practical and rewarding way to support the BTO’s research programmes. Six times a year, members receive BTO News in which the latest survey results and analyses are reported. For more details of BTO membership click here. Please click on the following links if you are able to consider making a donation or remembering the BTO in your will, or contact our fundraising manager for personal advice.

Volunteer bird surveys can make an extremely efficient and cost-effective contribution to the environmental and wildlife monitoring that is required of governments by international agreements or national legislation. A substantial part of the BTO’s work is concerned with feeding key data into this official monitoring process and is supported by a productive and developing partnership with government funders, primarily the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (click here for latest BTO/JNCC Annual Report) acting on behalf of the UK country agencies. The ringing scheme in the Republic of Ireland is supported by a grant from Duchas- The Heritage Service. The Waterways Breeding Bird Survey is supported by the Environment Agency and several water companies. These are just examples of our constructive partnerships with major funders. The BTO is very grateful to all its partners and funders and will further develop the funder acknowledgement pages on this web site in the near future.

Thanks to the support of our members, donors and long-term partners the BTO has now built up a unique cadre of scientific expertise in ornithology and ecology. We employ more than 20 senior staff with PhDs, supported by ecology graduates and fieldworkers and we have established a strong track record in design and implementation of fieldwork, analysis and modelling of complex data and publication in major journals. This enables us to bid successfully for research funding, both from research councils such as NERC and BBSRC and in collaboration with universities, government laboratories and other institutes. In addition, from time to time we undertake private contract research both independently and in consortium with consultancies and other commercial partners. See the BTO Research pages for more details and examples of our work.

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