Launch of the Students’ Green Fund Many thanks for giving us the opportunity to close this year’s AMSU Conference. Congratulations to Loughborough and the CoCo As Gemma has said we have been going through difficult times at NUS over the past two months as we’ve undertaken a re-structure which results in a net loss of 20 staff, and it’s been nice for the past few days to have been amongst friends and colleagues. I do believe we are through the worst but I’d like to say thank you to all of you who have sent supportive comments to us. You should know that every difficult decision we have made has been taken in order to significantly raise our game so we are adding real value to our members - students’ unions - and so we are all ultimately delivering for students. I will explain more about the re-structure shortly but for those of you who didn’t attend any of NUS’ strategic conversation events earlier in the year this presentation title may seem a little odd – so I’ll try and give you some context. For those of you who were at the strategic conversation events I promise not to go on about elephants any more after today. But first here is a picture of me wrestling an elephant.

A latent student interest in sustainability: NUS HEA surveys

Green Impact Students’ Unions – Gold and Excellence

Students’ Green Fund £5m fund for student-led sustainability projects, to be run by students’ unions in partnership with their parent institutions Four key themes: Student engagement Partnership Impact Legacy

Objectives Initiate a step change in student engagement in sustainability issues Enable students to become meaningful agents for change on sustainability issues in higher education Ensure sustainability remains an institutional priority within the sector Put English higher education on the map for its sustainability efforts

How will it work? Competitive bidding process for c25-50 two-year sustainability projects by students’ unions, at c£50k-£150k per year Open to all English SUs whose institutions in receipt of HEFCE funding, including FEIs Open call to encourage innovation Revenue and capital costs; joint projects and partnerships Formative feedback process Applications deadline: EoIs 05 June 2013 (but advised sooner the better) Full applications 26 June 2013 Student-led funding panel Projects start Aug / Sept 2013

We really need you Your expertise Your ideas Your support Your connections

nus.org.uk/sgf #EAUCconf13 #SGF @NUS_Greener