Minstead Study Centre opened in 1968.  Since then, over 110,000 children have stayed at the Centre and had the wonderful opportunity to learn more about the New Forest, the natural environment and their role in helping to protect and conserve it.  

In many ways, Minstead Study Centre was ahead of its time - teaching younger generations to care for our planet long before the world woke up to the damage we are doing. Now more than ever, young people need to learn about humankind’s negative impacts on the natural world and, crucially, what they can do to live more sustainably.

 In order to be confident that we will be here well into the future, we need continuing financial support from businesses, patrons (individuals who make regular donations) and well wishers who collect on our behalf or make donations. 

Our premises are owned by Hampshire County Council but we receive no funding from them. All our income comes from schools who pay to visit us. We try to keep our prices as low as we can so that all children, no matter what their background, have the opportunity to come to Minstead. We therefore seek funding and support from a wide range of sponsors and funders to enable us to maintain and improve our site, to develop new projects and to subsidise visits from inner city schools and young carers. This kind of funding is hard to access from grant making bodies on an ongoing basis, so is very important to our long term viability and ensures that we can offer visits to all young people, whatever their circumstances.  

On this page you will find a number of different ways in which you can support us. 

Become a corporate sponsor

You can help us in a number of ways:

• Support our projects – we are constantly looking for ways to improve our site and usually have one or more projects on the go for which we need financial support. Currently we are fundraising towards replacing our roundhouse roof, expanding our Big Grow project to include outreach work with local schools and also towards making Minstead Study Centre truly “Zero Waste” (buy buying some kitchen equipment, such as an apple press, that makes this possible). Find out more here.

• Become a corporate sponsor and partner – pledge a fixed amount of money each year to support our work.  In return we can offer you the use of our facilities for staff team-building events.

• Make us a beneficiary of company / employee fundraising – could your staff take on a challenge to raise money for us?

• Donate staff time or products to us – we often need volunteers in our 7 acres of grounds and frequently need building and gardening materials

  Make a one-off donation

 We would be delighted if you would like to visit us here at Minstead to find out more about what we do and to talk about how we might work together with you.

Other ways to Donate...