Simpson Associates empowers ‘The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts’

The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (RSWT) is the central charity that supports the federation of 46 independent Wildlife Trusts working for nature’s recovery across the UK. The Wildlife Trusts’ vision is of a thriving natural world, with abundant wildlife and healthy natural habitats playing a valued role in addressing the climate and nature emergencies, and everyone inspired to take action for nature’s recovery.

Collectively, The Wildlife Trusts look after over 2,300 nature reserves, operate 123 visitor and education centres and own 29 working farms. The role of RSWT is to ensure a strong voice for wildlife at a UK level, supporting the individual Wildlife Trusts to be a strong force for nature in their local areas and to work together to achieve even greater impact as a collective.

The Wildlife Trusts are on a mission to bring about a people-powered nature and climate recovery by empowering people to take meaningful action for nature, and to create an inclusive society where nature matters to everyone, everywhere.

This partnership will revolutionise how the Wildlife Trusts harness their data to drive efforts to protect wildlife and wild places, leveraging cutting-edge technology.

Simpson Associates is enabling RSWT with the foundations to enhance decision-making through a modern, Azure Databricks data management platform with a Lakehouse architecture. With the climate crisis making wildlife protection more urgent than ever, data-driven decision-making systems are increasingly valuable to supporting the mission of not-for-profit organisations such as RSWT.

“At the Wildlife Trusts, having a solid, fit for purpose and secure data platform to underpin our data ambitions and strategy is essential for helping us tackle shared challenges as a federation and respond to new opportunities. We need a system that can handle large amounts of varied data, provide strong data governance, and scale easily without compromising security. That’s why we teamed up with Simpson Associates – their technical know-how and experience with charities made them the chosen partner.

Now, we’ve started to build out the secure data platform underpinned by a data lake, which means we can pool and leverage insights and data from across the Wildlife Trusts, open sources of data and from our own information. This includes learning more about our spatial data – critical for a grassroots charity – and enables us to see where we are taking action for nature of all kinds. This gives us a more complete picture of what’s happening on the ground, helps us spot trends and makes it easier to measure the impact of our work. It also means we can make smarter, data-driven decisions and respond faster and more strategically in our mission to bring back wildlife and create a thriving natural world.”

Alice Kershaw, Head of Digital Transformation at RSWT

Transforming Data into Action for Conservation

To drive impactful conservation efforts, Wildlife Trusts require accurate, timely, and secure data. However, like many charitable organisations, they faced challenges with disparate data sources, legacy systems, and the need for a scalable, modern solution.

In close collaboration, Simpson Associates and RSWT developed a robust, cloud-based data platform that addresses the unique organisational needs of the Wildlife Trusts and helps streamline the day-to-day operations of running a not-for-profit business.

The new data platform drives key benefits, including:

• Enhanced Decision-Making – By consolidating disparate data sources into a single platform, Wildlife Trusts aim to remove data silos and now has a 'single version of the truth,' available to the wider federation, enabling more informed and efficient decision-making.

• Geospatial Intelligence & Insights – Leveraging Databricks and open-source tools, RSWT now benefit from enriched geospatial analytics, integrating demographic and environmental data within their shared ESRI platform to better understand site locations, activity, and visitor patterns.

• Robust Security & Governance – Built using the Unity Catalog feature of Databricks, they now have access control, ultimately excelling data governance and establishing a solid and secure data foundation.

• Scalability for Future Growth – The flexible infrastructure supports future enhancements, allowing for increased data capacity and evolving conservation needs.

“I am delighted to announce our partnership with The Wildlife Trusts, who are a great example of how data can be a force for good. By leveraging Databricks on Microsoft Azure, RSWT are able to harness their data more effectively, helping to bring nature back. This new data platform has the potential to empower the Wildlife Trust federation with the timely insight and capability they need to protect and bring back wildlife and wild places across the UK.”

Jake O’Meara, Business Development Manager at Simpson Associates

Benefits of a Unified Data Strategy

This collaboration aims to establish a single source of truth for analytics efforts built by the Wildlife Trusts, integrating multiple systems into a unified platform. By enabling real-time data access across the federation, this solution enhances analytics for monitoring, supporter insights, and spotting opportunities. Advanced data governance protocols ensure secure management of sensitive data while maintaining GDPR compliance.

Through an enterprise data model, the Wildlife Trusts can build analytics that span business functions such as geospatial datasets being integrated into customer surveys and volunteer information that can assist citizen science.

To support long-term adoption and development of the platform, Simpson Associates will provide comprehensive training and support during the engagement, empowering staff with the skills to harness data insights for impactful decision-making. This partnership demonstrates how modern technology and data-driven strategies can empower conservation efforts and drive meaningful environmental change.