Nov. 9, 2026

Small Grants, Big Impact: How Sea-Changers Funds Community Ocean Action

Maybe you've had the thought. There's a stretch of beach in your town that needs a regular cleanup. A spot where a water fountain would cut down on plastic bottles. A rock pool where local kids could learn what lives along their coast.

You don't need a fortune to make it happen. You need a little money, and someone willing to back you.

That kind of funding doesn't come along often. But in the UK, a small charity called Sea-Changers has spent about 15 years doing exactly that.

Two divers who saw the change

Helen Webb and Rachel Lopata aren't marine scientists. Helen has spent her career in equality, diversity and inclusion. Rachel's has been in public consultation and engagement, helping government bodies involve people in decisions that affect their lives.

What they share is the sea. Both grew up with family holidays on the UK coast, often in the rain. About 25 years ago they learned to dive, and that first look underwater hooked them. They spent the next decade diving around the UK, Europe and beyond.

They also started noticing things. Fewer fish at sites they returned to. More plastic. Damaged reefs. Then they started reading, and the more they read, the more frightened they got. They wanted to keep diving into their nineties, and they weren't sure the ocean would be there for them.

So they asked the question a lot of us ask: we're not scientists, so what can we actually do?

A different kind of answer

They could have picked one favourite dive site and spent every weekend protecting it. That would have been worthwhile. Instead, they drew on what they already knew: business, communities and how to bring people together.

Their reasoning was simple. There had to be plenty of people like them who loved the sea and wanted to help. And there had to be businesses, especially ones that depend on the ocean, that wanted to support that work. Why not connect the two?

That's Sea-Changers. The charity brings in money from businesses, foundations and trusts, then runs grant programmes that hand out small grants to community-based marine conservation projects all over the UK. Main grants run from £500 to £2,500, and a small grants fund offers up to £500 year-round for things like equipment.

By Helen and Rachel's count, Sea-Changers has now funded more than 600 projects. It's still run by volunteers, including the two founders, who both have day jobs. They recently hired their first staff member. Much of it runs from a spare room in their house. In 2023, both were awarded MBEs for services to marine conservation.

Surround yourself with people who know

Neither founder claims to have had it all figured out. They went in with what Helen calls blind optimism and a lot of faith, then quickly surrounded themselves with people who did know: how to set up a charity, how marine conservation works, what makes a strong project. Some people told them it was a terrible idea. Others encouraged them.

Today, a panel of expert assessors reviews every application and judges whether a project fits its place. And far from wearing them down, the work keeps them going. Every application, even the ones they can't fund, comes from someone who wants to do something good where they live. Helen describes it as a daily dose of hope.

"We believe in you. Have a go."

Some of the most interesting applications come through Sea-Changers' Innovation Fund, which runs once a year and offers grants of up to £10,000 for new, untested ideas.

One recent example: a project to train conservation dogs to sniff out invasive sea squirts on the shore. Rachel admits it would never have occurred to her that dogs could do that. A grant of £1,800 let the team prove the concept, and the project is now scaling up.

Then there's Project Seagrass. Back in 2013, seagrass planting was the kind of idea people looked at sideways. Sea-Changers was one of its earliest UK funders. Today Project Seagrass works around the world.

Sea-Changers doesn't have the money to scale projects like that. What it can do is help them get started, prove the idea works, and take that proof to the funders who can.

Sometimes a grant does something money alone can't. Helen says projects often tell them the most important thing was simply that someone believed in what they were doing.

It's okay if it doesn't work

Not every project they fund will succeed, and Sea-Changers is at peace with that. Funding new ideas means taking a chance.

Andrew sees the same thing in science. A project that doesn't turn out the way you expected still teaches you something. Share what happened, and someone else can pick it up, try a new approach, and get it to work.

Every coastline is different

The UK coast is famously varied, and so are the communities along it. Some regions, like south-west England and parts of Scotland, have dense, well-connected networks of conservation groups. Others are spread out, with coastline that's hard to reach and groups working on their own.

So Sea-Changers joins the dots. When an application from Norfolk looks like something they've already funded in Cornwall, they connect the two groups so nobody has to reinvent the wheel.

In Scotland, they've gone further. With support from the William Grant Foundation, the Scottish Learning Fund pays for small community groups to travel and learn from each other. For a group on one island, getting to another island or the mainland isn't a quick trip. A little funding means they can go see what's working somewhere else and bring those lessons home.

Let communities set the priorities

Large, top-down restoration programmes run by governments and big NGOs matter. But even when they try to engage communities, they can feel like decisions that have already been made.

Sea-Changers starts from the other end. It doesn't arrive with an agenda. Communities know their own place and can see what's changing on the ground, so they bring the ideas, whether that's protection, education or citizen science. The expert panel still checks whether an idea is feasible and won't do harm.

Often the best ideas aren't about the water at all. They're about getting kids rock pooling or bringing more people in the community on board.

Local projects can also slot into bigger plans. In Sussex Bay, on England's south coast, local authorities, conservation groups and communities work together on seascape recovery, and a small grant can help one group play its part in that wider effort.

And when an idea comes from the community, people own it. They came up with it, they did the hard work, and they get to see the results.

Who gets left out

Inclusion sits close to Helen and Rachel's hearts. They try to make the application process feel manageable for people who've never filled out a grant form before.

When they looked at where their spring grants went, they found the money had reached groups of disabled people, people living with long-term health conditions, an LGBTQ youth group, and young people on low incomes who had never been to the sea. They weren't targeting those groups; every application was judged on its conservation outcomes. People who often find it hard to access the coast simply applied, and won.

They've also designed programmes on purpose, pairing conservation with social goals like mental health, low income, or isolation among refugees.

Rachel is honest about the limits. Conservation can be an affluent, privileged pastime. Many communities are focused on feeding their kids and keeping the heating on. And volunteering takes time and money that many people don't have, which is also why unpaid internships shut people out. Sea-Changers can pull small levers, but the income barrier is a systemic problem bigger than any one charity.

Small grants on a global stage

Helen and Rachel are heading to Edinburgh this week for the International Marine Conservation Congress (IMCC8), where they're speaking on a plenary panel called "Small Grants, Big Impact." It's their first IMCC, and both admit to a little imposter syndrome about speaking alongside scientists.

Andrew thinks they'll fit right in. IMCC isn't just about describing problems. It's about putting solutions into practice, and that's exactly what Sea-Changers does.

What they hope people take away:

Small, low-level funding achieves a lot.
Big funders need a bridge to the grassroots. Many local projects could never apply to a large funder. They don't have the skills, the access, or the scale. An organisation like Sea-Changers can carry big money down to the local level at low risk. The William Grant Foundation already works with them for exactly that reason.
The model can be copied. It doesn't have to be called Sea-Changers. A version could work in New Zealand, Greece or anywhere else.
You don't have to be an expert. You need determination, maybe a little naivety, and a real desire to make a difference.

Come for the impact, stay for the community

Andrew sees something bigger in all of this. When a community pulls off one project, people start to believe they can take on the next, harder one.

It brings people together, too. Surfrider Foundation CEO Chad Nelsen likes to say people come for the impact and stay for the community. Last week, Lilly Woodbury of Surfrider Foundation Canada shared how a small group in Tofino helped make their beaches so clean that the chapter's cleanup effort moved elsewhere, then took those wins to the province.

When life feels heavy, coming together over one local cause can lift people up. A grant of a few hundred or a few thousand pounds can go a long way.

Your action

Got an idea for your coast, lake or river? Find out who funds small community projects where you live. In the UK, start with Sea-Changers. Elsewhere, look for local foundations, community trusts or businesses that care about the water.

Tell Andrew about it. If your community has run an environmental project, with or without funding, he'd love to hear what you did.

At IMCC8? Catch Helen and Rachel's panel, and say hi to Andrew while you're there.

Takeaways

You don't need to be a scientist to make a real difference for the ocean
Small grants can launch projects big funders would never reach
A grant also says "we believe in you," and that confidence matters
Funding new ideas means some won't work, and that's how we learn
Communities know their coast best; let them set the priorities
Connecting groups helps everyone avoid reinventing the wheel
Income is still a major barrier to taking part in conservation

Sources

Andrew Lewin

CEO

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