How Natalie Fee turned a crowdfunder for a song into a sustainability movement

by Tom Wood | Mar 26, 2025 | Stories

What does it take to go from a personal passion project to leading a national environmental movement? For author, activist and musician Natalie Fée, it started with a single song — and a little help from Crowdfunder.

In the latest episode of Podcast on Purpose, host Philippa Forrester and Crowdfunder Co-CEO Simon Deverell sit down with Natalie to trace the steps of her incredible journey. From her beginnings in television to founding the award-winning environmental organisation City to Sea, Natalie’s story is a powerful example of purpose in action.

Listen to the episode wherever you get your podcasts:

🎶 It started with a song

Natalie’s first experience with Crowdfunder came in 2014, when she crowdfunded to produce a music video about plastic pollution. Inspired by a devastating short film showing albatross chicks dying with stomachs full of plastic, she felt compelled to respond — not just emotionally, but creatively.

“My immediate response to the plastic pollution issue was a song. And being fabulously naive and optimistic, I thought, oh my God, it could go viral and change the world. And oh, the kids will stop drinking Coca-Cola and dropping bottle top caps everywhere and we’ll save the albatross.”

While the video didn’t achieve global impact, the crowdfunding campaign behind it did. Natalie raised around £6,000 to produce the song — and, more importantly, built her first community of supporters. That momentum would go on to power the early days of City to Sea, founded in Bristol in 2015.

“When I realised, oh, maybe the music video isn’t going to change the world, I built on the momentum of my crowdfunder because I had a list of supporters. I had business sponsors that had come in through the business rewards, and I just sort of leveraged that and kind of took that and ran with it.”

💧 Building a movement

Since then, City to Sea has grown into one of the UK’s leading voices on tackling plastic pollution at source. While only some of their work has been crowdfunded, Natalie credits her original Crowdfunder campaign as the launchpad for a decade of activism.

The organisation has delivered several high-impact campaigns, including:

Switch the Stick – A campaign to eliminate plastic cotton buds from UK retailers. “Within about six months we got all nine major retailers to commit to not selling cotton buds out of plastic and having to make them out of paper instead… That basically in one campaign knocked out 400 tonnes of non-recyclable single use plastic at source every year.”
Plastic Free Periods – Educating the public on the hidden plastic in menstrual products. “Most people don’t know that a conventional box of menstrual pads contains the same amount of plastic as five carrier bags.”
Refill – City to Sea’s flagship campaign helping people reduce single-use plastic in everyday life. “The Refill campaign, which has been City to Sea’s biggest campaign to date, which helps people connect to places they can eat, drink and shop with less plastic.”

While not all of these were crowdfunded, they were made possible by the community Natalie first brought together — and have helped push forward environmental policy, behaviour change and education across the UK.

💥 Reuse and the return to Crowdfunder

City to Sea has returned to Crowdfunder multiple times — most recently in 2023 with the Reuse Manifesto campaign, launched on World Refill Day. This project aimed to raise awareness and funds to pressure government into setting legally binding reuse targets for packaging.

“So we decided that we would raise some funds to then do a campaign called our Reuse Manifesto. And we’re calling on, the government for 30% reusable packaging by 2030.”

The campaign raised recieved support from match funding partner Aviva.

“Supporters love knowing two things when they’re giving money… One is urgency and the other is leverage. So if you’ve got like, we’ve got two weeks to raise £10,000 and every, you know, £50 is going to become £100… that sort of match funding or double match funding is really, really helpful.”

Natalie also sees crowdfunding as a powerful awareness tool in its own right.

“Even if you don’t reach your target, you’ll tell everyone about all your services that you’re listing as your rewards, and it will be a brilliant marketing campaign.”

🎤 Coming full circle

After nearly ten years leading City to Sea, Natalie is reconnecting with her musical roots. She’s signed a record deal and is releasing her debut album Daughter of Nature in April 2025.

“After starting City to Sea with the song, ten years later, I’m about to start releasing music and I got signed to a record label at age 46.”

While she’s stepped back slightly from the day-to-day running of City to Sea, Natalie’s passion for environmental work continues — and so does her connection to Crowdfunder.

“I recommend it to everybody, obviously, because it’s been… one of the key things, the key fundraising models that I’ve used over the last ten years.”

💚 Why we love this story

Natalie’s story is a powerful reminder that big change often starts small — with an idea, a message, and the courage to share it. Her work with City to Sea has reached national scale, but it all started with a personal crowdfunder and a song.

Whether you’re an artist, activist, entrepreneur or changemaker, Crowdfunder is here to help turn your purpose into action.