The big players in the environmental movement are often very big: Greenpeace has offices in 41 countries, the WWF network is active in more than 100 and the United Nations has nearly 200 member countries.

This makes sense, given the national and often global nature of problems such as climate change, habitat destruction and loss of biodiversity.

But big is not the only option. Small not-for-profits with environmental goals are making significant differences to problems in their local communities that larger organisations sometimes miss.

“Being on the ground and being involved in the community means that you really reach the parts that others can’t, because you’re not just putting adverts on bus stops,” says Daniel Shah, a research and policy officer at the Social Enterprise Coalition. “Social enterprises are not just advocating behavioural change but are actually delivering something on the ground, whether that is insulating homes, taking care of woodlands or saving resources.”

They can also generate ideas that inspire others across the world. For example, Hill Holt Wood (www.hillholtwood.com), a social enterprise that manages a 14-hectare ancient woodland in Lincolnshire, is naturally limited by the size of the woodland that it has been founded to manage, but it is leading the way in pioneering green building techniques.

Another option for small organisations is to join forces with other similar enterprises. “If you are a resources enterprise you can stay at a local level but get big contracts by joining a consortium with other organisations like yourself,” Shah says. Alternatively, you could set up a network that supports other similar businesses; for example, the Furniture Re-use Network (www.frn.org.uk) links some 400 organisations that help poor households get access to furniture and electrical equipment while diverting about 90,000 tonnes of waste from landfill.

Steve Grainger, the chief executive of Avon Wildlife Trust (www.avonwildlifetrust.org.uk), is a firm believer in the value of working with other social enterprises.

His trust, which works to protect the natural environment, is one of 47 individual trusts, all under the aegis of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, that cover the whole of the British Isles. “We are independent charities and registered companies but we work together in various ways,” he says. “Being local means we know the local issues, and we have a very strong local membership, which gives us enormous strength.”

Partnerships with other trusts allows gives them access to more funding opportunities and a much stronger voice when it comes to issues such as proposals for barrages across the Severn Estuary, which would affect a number of areas in England and Wales. “We could not possibly cope with running a campaign about that on our own so we have joined up with other trusts … and the Royal Society is also involved, so we have the benefit of local, regional and national all linked up together.”

Wildscreen (www.wildscreen.org.uk), a charity that promotes a global appreciation of nature through photography and film footage, also has important partnerships, says Harriet Nimmo, the chief executive of the Bristol-based organisation. It has recently linked up with Google Earth, while it has strong connections with well-known conservationists as well as the leading film-makers and photographers who allow their work to be collected and stored in ARKive. This is a digital library that allows people to use the images free for educational purposes; the aim is that grabbing people’s attention with the images will then encourage them to look further and get more involved in nature.

The site also provides opportunity for other organisations to join its network and take advantage of its global reach (about 20,000 people download from the site each day). Each photograph or piece of footage on the site has links to other groups that work with that particular animal or in that area. “Once you have been wowed by the pictures you can find out more about the organisations that are working on the ground,” Nimmo says.