How Mountain Rescue Uses FlippingBook to Keep Volunteers Informed and Gather Support

Mountain Rescue England and Wales (MREW) is a national charity made up of 48 independent volunteer teams spread across England and Wales.

With nearly 4,000 calls for assistance per year, its volunteers respond to countless emergencies: rescuing climbers from steep crags, helping lost walkers, and searching for vulnerable people. They operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, making sure injured people reach safety while supporting families through their most difficult moments.

Challenge

To keep volunteer teams informed, MREW launched Mountain Rescue Magazine in 2001. What began as an internal publication gradually evolved into a way to share rescue stories, celebrate achievements, and communicate national initiatives and statistics.

Originally published in print, the magazine was distributed to team bases—many in remote mountain areas where rescues take place. For years, this approach worked well. Then COVID-19 arrived, and distributing printed copies became much more difficult.

Judy Whiteside, MREW's editor, began looking for a digital alternative that could help the organization continue reaching team members wherever they were.

Coming from a publishing and design background, Judy wanted something that preserved the familiar experience of reading a magazine. A static PDF could not offer the same sense of immersion and interaction, so she began looking for a digital format that felt more natural to explore. That search led her to FlippingBook.

I really like FlippingBook’s functionality. It is interactive, and you can turn the pages. It was the thing that most resembled my own experience of how a magazine should look.

Solution

In 2020, MREW switched to FlippingBook. This gave the organization an easy way to get the magazine to volunteers. The team could simply turn each issue into a flipbook and share it through a single link or on social media.

Moving online also opened up a new opportunity to reach a wider community around mountain rescue: from loyal supporters and fundraisers to anyone curious about what goes on behind the scenes.

We could get the magazine out to all our team members. Then we realized there was a knock-on effect. Now we could also share it with our supporters and people who fundraise for us.

MREW turned to social media to expand its reach, sharing flipbooks directly on Facebook with its 42,000+ followers. These posts also drove extra traffic back to its website, thanks to the clickable logo branding on each flipbook.

Another feature that simplified content organization and distribution was the ability to create bookshelves. Rather than sending separate links for each issue, Judy could bring all its reviews together in a single, branded library.

What I loved about the Bookshelf was that I could put the annual reviews there since we have gone digital. Instead of sharing one link at a time, we could share all those links at the same time, in the same document or post.

Looking back through the years, the collection clearly demonstrated the rising demands on MREW’s volunteers. For instance, readers could easily see the steep contrast between the 2,000 callouts MREW handled in 2019 compared to nearly 4,000 callouts just a few years later.

Judy could also use the built-in analytics to track reader engagement and gain useful insights into how the content performed over time and which issues attracted the most interest.

It is interesting to look at the statistics and see how the issues continue to gain views, and how some are viewed more often than others.

Finally, the flipbook format brought extra value to MREW’s partners and advertisers. Judy embedded interactive links directly into articles and ads, allowing readers to click straight through to online resources and sponsor websites. It was a simple, win-win way to give supporters another reason to stay involved.

If there is an advertiser in there, there will be a link to their website, so that is an added bonus.

Results

FlippingBook significantly changed how MREW manages and shares its magazines and reviews. By moving beyond print, the organization presents content as interactive flipbooks, organizes issues in branded hubs that simplify distribution, increases community awareness, and gives its partners more visibility.

With FlippingBook, Mountain Rescue England and Wales can:

• Distribute magazines instantly to individual volunteers, leadership teams, and thousands of supporters through a single link.
• Consolidate years of reviews into a single, branded digital library that shows the rising demands on its teams.
• Drive web traffic using interactive branding and clickable logos on every flipbook.
• Provide measurable value to sponsors through links that connect readers to advertiser websites.
• Track reader engagement over time to learn exactly which issues and articles resonate most with its audience.

The team continues to explore additional features, including advanced analytics and richer multimedia experiences through embedded video content.

As demand for MREW’s life-saving work continues to grow, this modern approach to content ensures its community stays informed, engaged, and connected for years to come.