A Toolbox of Resources

Volunteer work is not just an item on a resume or college application – it’s an essential part of a functioning society. The benefits of volunteer work reach far and wide with a ripple effect that begins with the individual and nonprofit organization and extends beyond the larger community, benefiting everyone in its wake. In this guide, you’ll learn more about the importance of volunteer work, how to find volunteer opportunities, and how to transition from volunteering to a career in a nonprofit. This guide was shared by LearnHowtoBecome.org.

Good relationships build trust and goodwill and provide a solid foundation for partners to work together towards mutual goals and objectives. Experience shows that successful collaborative groups and collaborative efforts often exhibit the following features. This tools will help evaluate a collaborative group and discusses successful collaboration.

Collaborative groups are increasingly developing creative tools to streamline collaborative processes and work more efficiently with the U.S. Forest Service. This best practice includes Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition (NEWFC) Guidelines and an example of how the guidelines have informed Colville National Forest project development.

Developing a strategy and supporting documents can help tell a collaborative group’s story and build public support -- In 2014 the Elkhorn Restoration Committee, which focuses on the Elkhorn Mountain wildlife management area of the Helena and Beaverhead‐Deerlodge National Forests in Montana, developed a communication strategy members call the Inform, Involve, and Educate Outreach Program. The strategy was developed to build public support and credibility for the group, and also to help recruit new members. The Restoration Committee hopes to share its story, accomplishments, and program of work with members of local government, sportsmenʹs organizations, community groups, schools, businesses, and private landowners.

With the enactment of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, Forest Landscape Restoration Act, and similar laws and policies, collaboration — an open and inclusive process through which two or more individuals or organizations work together to address a problem/issue that concerns them all and that no one of them is likely to be able to resolve alone — has gained increasing popularity as a way to resolve natural resource management challenges. With this increased engagement in the project development process, collaborative groups are beginning to see the fruits of their work from start to finish: landscape prioritization, project area identification, field trips, prescription development, proposals for action, project implementation, and monitoring of results are all now part of the work of collaborative groups. In this White Paper, published by the Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University, Susan Jane Brown provides information on administrative and legal review opportunities for collaborative groups.

Measuring the social and economic impacts of collaborative stewardship work is extremely important to community-based groups and their constituents. In this session, the Ecosystem Workforce Program and the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute presented reports and tools they each recently released to assist community groups identify and measure socioeconomic indicators. In addition, Salmon Valley Stewardship described their efforts to monitor the economic impact of their work, and the exciting results they can now report.

This best practice outlines the Diablo Trust's proactive work to ease transitions and turnover by developing an orientation document, called the “Diablo Trust: History, Purpose and Overview.”

Both nonprofit organizations with staff and those that are all‐volunteer periodically face the issue of reorganizing their human resources to adjust to new challenges and increase effectiveness. This document outlines considerations to make when hiring a staff person or contractor.