Donors flee WWF, Greenpeace, others

There has been a steep drop in the number of people who donate funds to environmental organizations; research by the VARA-radio program “Vroege Vogels” reports that membership numbers of hundreds of organizations have dropped by a few thousand in the last year.

The research speaks of a drop from 60,000 to 3,635,266. The World Wide Fund for Nature lost the most members (22,800), but still remains the largest environmental organization in the Netherlands with 803,200 donors. Greenpeace lost 18,477 members and was left with 434, 553. One third of the environmental organizations did see an increase of supporters, like Stichting AAP (1,867) and World Animal Protection (1,549). The Vroege Vogels report speculates that the drop was caused by the economic crisis. In 2003 nature organizations could count on more than four million donors, but five years this number started to dwindle. It appears young people are less willing to align themselves with just one organization; they do want to support nature and environmental efforts, but rather make single contributions to specific causes or take part in an Air Miles special. Vroege Vogels editor Joost Huijsing warned that politicians should not take the drop in support to mean that there is less attention for nature and environment. “The number of members in this sector remains ten times the quantity of all members of political parties combined,” Huijsing said. Environmental organizations have seen supports numbers drop from 60,000 to 3,635,266.