Volunteers give back in so many ways
Each summer our team swells as we gear up for HRWC’s field season. Our numbers more than double. The office bustles. The new lab hosts heavy traffic. Gear comes and goes. Suited up in HRWC t-shirts and waders, our volunteers fan out across the watershed to do the work of a watershed council. This is when our volunteer community is most visible, but any time of year we have volunteers helping us in myriad ways. The good feeling I get from seeing our volunteers and hearing of the many ways they support our mission is unrivaled. It is an essential antidote to the strains of working in a field that can be mired in bad news and big challenges.
The Fall 2025 issue of the Huron River Report shares a sampling of the ways volunteers give their time and energy to contribute to our mission. Whether it’s a few hours a year caring for an adopted storm drain or hundreds of hours a year helping carry out our river monitoring program, volunteers are a critical part of our team. The people that find their way to HRWC and ask, “How can I help?” all have different motivations, skills, and availability—but they all share a desire to give back, to contribute, to be a part of something.
The value of volunteers
Non-profit organizations notoriously operate on a shoestring. We attempt to do big things with very little. We put the dollars we raise toward work to advance the mission. We tackle problems that are much bigger than we are, but we bring passion and dedication and the knowledge that the challenges of our time will not solve themselves. This makes the work of a volunteer so invaluable. I was recently looking at the number of volunteer hours we log every year. People collectively donate around 5000 hours annually—the equivalent to almost two and half additional staff! Even at a very conservative hourly rate of $25, volunteers facilitate an additional $125,000 worth of work. Further, an often-overlooked value of volunteer contributions is match funding. Funders often have match requirements on grants. What this means essentially, is the funder will say we will contribute X amount to this project if you can find Y amount from another source. Sometimes these match requirements can be a barrier to securing funding. Volunteer hours can count as match, making us more competitive for grant funding and expanding what we can accomplish on a project.
Feelings of gratitude
So let me take this moment, to thank each of you who has donated your time over the years, whether serving on our board of directors, stuffing envelopes for a membership campaign, working our Suds on the River fundraiser, attending a volunteer monitoring day or providing pro-bono expertise. We truly couldn’t do it without you, nor would we want to because you all become such a positive part of our Huron River community. I feel such gratitude.
— Rebecca Esselman
HRWC Executive Director
Even my personal life has been directly touched by HRWC volunteers. Through our Streamside Education Program and the SEMI’s Coalition, volunteers help Dexter School teachers Cheryl Darnton and Jim Barnes teach kids about the importance of water, ecosystems, and indigenous history and literally get their feet wet in river protection. My 7th, 5th and 3rd graders give HRWC volunteers two thumbs up!
This blog post is also published in the Huron River Report, Fall 2024.