At the end of 2023, we launched a campaign to Save The Mental Elf. If you missed the blog post at the time, here’s what we said:
“My business partner Douglas Badenoch and I have previously worked for the NHS and at the University of Oxford. In 2002 we set up a business and began working with charities, universities and the health service. This business still exists today, but like many small businesses, we have found the last few years very difficult.
We have financed The Mental Elf for the last 12 years out of our own pockets. It’s important to us that The Mental Elf remains a trusted, independent brand, but it costs around £50,000 a year to run the site, and at the moment, late 2023, we’re really struggling to make ends meet . We need your help.
Thank you for your kindness and support
We received an astonishing response to this call for help. Over 150 people donated to our fundraising campaign, which raised over £4,000 and was vital to maintaining the website over the winter months. We’ve also received hundreds of messages of support from people telling us how important the Mind Elf is to them and how much they would miss us if we disappeared.
A huge thank you to everyone who donated or sent kind messages to keep us going. Your help and support really means a lot!
We said in our blog post in December: “We hope to remember this time in years to come as the moment when our community of bloggers, supporters and followers all came together to save The Mental Elf and keep it online.” Today we have some exciting news!
Securing the future of The Mental Elf
While trying to raise funds from our community, we have also had many conversations with key people and organizations in the field of mental health science. We spoke to mental health research funders, universities and charities; explore the different options available to us as we try to make the future of our platform sustainable. Thank you very much to everyone who advised us and generously gave their time to help guide our thinking. You know who you are!
We are delighted to announce today that Mental Elf has received a 3-year discretionary award from the Wellcome Trust, which will enable us to continue to run the website as we have for recent years. We are extremely grateful to Wellcome for this support which is particularly important to us as it allows us to maintain our independence. Wellcome made it clear from the start of our conversations that they wanted no involvement in how the platform is run, the topics we choose to cover, the articles we select to blog about, or who we ask to blog about. write blogs. They just want to make sure we remain trustworthy and respected.
The Mental Elf plays a unique role in the mental health community, with its principles of clear communication, inclusion and intellectual rigor. Wellcome is delighted to support her in her continued work as a valued independent voice in the field.
– Niall Boyce, Field Development Manager – Mental Health, Wellcome Trust
Grow up and reach out
The Mind Elf has just turned thirteen and so we have a rollercoaster of teenage years ahead of us. With this core funding in place, we are now able to rebuild our entire core team (see here if you are interested in becoming an independent Elf Coordinator) and we now have the headspace to plan how we would like to develop this platform over time. the next few years. We have some exciting ideas in the works that we will announce soon, so watch this space for news.
In the meantime, if there are ways you can support your work, please ask for some #ElfHelp. You may be working on a research project that needs help establishing an online presence or disseminating results, you may need training in social media or critical appraisal, you may need videos, podcasts or graphics to help you get your message across, or you may have an event you’d like us to amplify. Whatever your needs, if you work in mental health, you can ask our Mental Elf team to work alongside you.
Get #ElfHelp for your project today.