Contribute

Please donate. This really is important now. The Society is young, and has almost no financial resources, but there is an enormous amount of work to be done. You can help by making a donation. Just use the Donation form to send money. If you have a plastic card and access to the Internet, there is information on that form about how to send money through Paypal.

Offer your time and skills. The Society recognizes that, being international in character, it may have Members for whom financial donations might be less easy. As there are many jobs to do, volunteered assistance is also tremendously valuable to the Society. When membership subscriptions are introduced later in 2012, the Society hopes to include a system of "paying" for membership through such contributions.

Skills needed. The Society needs a person with organizing skills who can co-ordinate offers of time from other volunteers! If you feel that you have suitable skills and you would like to offer in voluntary service for the Society, please contact the President, David Minter [e-mail: d.minter<at>cabi.org].

Things you can do for the Society. Here are some ideas of activities which will help to build our Society, raise the profile of fungi, and promote fungal conservation.

	Spread information about the Society on social networking websites. Your President is from a generation which finds it hard to come to grips with these wonderful new technologies. If you understand how they work, promote the Society on facebook and twitter!
	Get your friends and colleagues to join. Fungal conservation is important: it's their planet too. The more Members the Society has, the more resources it can call upon, and the more weight it has when lobbying is necessary.
	Contribute to Fungal Conservation. It's no good having a newsletter which only a small number of people write for. Look at the articles which are appearing and ask yourself, "could I do something similar?" Maybe there's an article about some project in Europe. If you are in South America, ask if there's something similar going on there. If English is not your first language, don't worry too much. You can get a basic translation into English through Google Translate now, and that software is getting better every day.
	Look at your country's track record for the CBD - look at the action plans and reports which it has submitted. If they don't deal satisfactorily with fungi (and that's virtually all of them), find the e-mail address of your country's CBD focal point, and write to that person. The hyperlinks you need can be found in our Micheli Guide to Fungal Conservation.
	Look at natural history museums and societies, and other similar bodies in your part of the world. Do they provide satisfactory coverage of the fungi? If they don't, gather evidence of the problem, then encourage them to change and, if they do change, gather evidence of the improvement (so that you can demonstrate that change), praise them, and nominate them for one of the Society's "fungus friendly awards". [note from the President, "I'm thinking aloud here, but wouldn't it be great to have some system of recognizing open minded organizations which recognize that fungi are important?"]
	Think about other jobs which need doing, and tell the Society's Officers about them. Don't leave it all to us.