Feature

Loving NiCHE Month: 2025 November Fundraising Campaign!

Scroll this

Do you remember the first time you heard about NiCHE?

Odds are that you first learned that we existed by reading one of the thousands of blog posts that we have published over the years. For many of you, you likely became aware of us as a student studying environmental history, historical geography, or environmental humanities. In every case, we like to think that once you know about us, you want to come back; and that once you come back, you’ll never leave. That’s because NiCHE was created to be, and continues to be, a community for those who want to better understand the relationship between people and the non-human world.

For more than twenty years, we have been working to build and maintain a network – a community – of scholars and people interested in scholarly work related to environmental history and humanities. We started out focused entirely on work related to Canadian people and places, but we’ve grown into so much more (although Canada is our foundations). Over the years, we’ve organized workshops and conferences, funded new projects and initiatives, published the work of a growing community of scholars, shared news about ground-breaking scholarship and upcoming events, created resources and project pages, and provided an array of opportunities for new and established scholars to connect and build the fields.

And now, each year in November, we turn to our community to ask for your help in supporting us, so that we can continue to promote, connect, and support all of you. We need your support!

Donate to NiCHE today
NICHE Buttons
NiCHE Buttons are available in our Merchandise Store!

We truly love the work we do, and we’d like everyone who reads, writes, and thinks about Canada and the environment to be a part of the community we support. NiCHE is a volunteer, non-profit organization driven by the opportunity to connect brilliant, insightful, and generous people and promote their work to a broad audience.

Over the next few weeks (November 3-21), we are asking all of you to show your support. In the last few years, we have been able to continue our work thanks to so many generous donations. This year, we’re hoping to raise $16,000!

This year we’re hoping to raise $16,000!

Last year, our website received more than 220,000 visits! Maybe you’ve showcased your research and writing with The Otter, or assigned a post to students to read, or shared something published on our site over social media? Perhaps you have been thinking of developing an online presence for your research and hope that we can create and host a Project page for you? Have you ever consulted the NiCHE Resources or Digital Tools pages to find tips for hosting a sustainable conference or to download syllabi? If you are planning on submitting a grant application, consider partnering with NiCHE to help with knowledge mobilization!

We have always been more than a website though. Every year, we work with local organizers to provide funds to support the Canadian History and Environment Summer School (CHESS). This year, CHESS 2026 will be held in Prince Edward Island on the theme of Climate & History (consider applying)! We rely on donations to raise funds to help subsidize student travel to CHESS.

And don’t forget to check out our online NiCHE merchandise store.

Budgets are tight these days, and there are so many worthy causes in need to support. But we are hopeful that our supporters will agree to donate an amount they are comfortable with to help us for another year!

Here’s a brief glimpse at what your donation can support in 2025!

  • A $60 donation helps pay for a small raise to compensate our part-time editor, digital strategist, and social media manager to maintain our online presence.
  • A $150 donation allows us to continue to offer small honoraria to contributors who are junior scholars, graduate students, and precariously employed to recognize the importance and value of the work they choose to publish with us.
  • A $250 donation makes it possible for us to provide travel bursary support to environmental history graduate students to attend the Canadian History and Environment Summer School.
  • But any donation amount contributes to NiCHE web hosting costs and publishing expenses.

At NiCHE, we are constantly imagining ways that we can continue to support our vibrant and connected scholarly community of people interested in environmental history and humanities. Please visit our fundraising page and consider a donation that can support our community and the work that you have come to expect from us, including the NiCHE blog, book reviews, news & announcements, monthly newsletter, a podcast, videos, a peer-reviewed journal, teaching/research resources, research project websites, and more.

From the entire executive and editorial board, thank you for seeing value in what we do at NiCHE!

Featured image: Caledon, ON, Canada. Photo by Surinder Pal Singh on Unsplash
The following two tabs change content below.
My Twitter profile

Andrew Watson

Assistant Professor at University of Saskatchewan
Andrew is the Director of NiCHE and Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Saskatchewan. His current research includes commodities and urban metabolism in Toronto between the mid 19th and mid 20th centuries; and a study of the relationship between liberalism and fossil fuel energy in Canada in the first half of the 20th century. His first book, Making Muskoka: Tourism, Rural Identity, and Sustainability, 1870-1920, was published in 2022 with UBC Press.

NiCHE encourages comments and constructive discussion of our articles. We reserve the right to delete comments that fail to meet our guidelines including comments under aliases, or that contain spam, harassment, or attacks on an individual.