A Great Year for Greenway Volunteers!

The Greenway Conservancy has a robust volunteer program that is crucial in supporting a variety of our operations. Each January we take a look back at how our volunteers have helped us and how to improve for the coming year. Here’s a peek at some of our metrics and data, and plans for the future!

Our volunteer hours and numbers have been steadily increasing since the program began in 2010 and this year we were able to significantly expand on volunteer service. We’re happy to report over 4,800 hours contributed by volunteers. Our volunteer number stayed steady at 845, which is a great indication that volunteers are getting more deeply involved. Using the value of a volunteer hour for Massachusetts determined by the Independent Sector, the monetary value of our volunteer hours is $134,000!

There are two main programs that contributed to this increase: our Art Ambassadors volunteered almost 1000 hours and our Special Project Assistants over 640 hours. To learn more about these opportunities, visit our website.

Over 2,500 of our volunteer hours came from our popular horticulture projects! We did over 80 projects this year, working with our dedicated individual volunteers as well as a variety of corporate, non-profit and community groups. Our 2016 horticulture projects for individuals are now available here. To learn more about our group volunteer program, visit our website here!

Our horticulture projects are the perfect way for casual volunteers to get out in the parks. Volunteers learn about our organic horticulture operations and The Greenway’s structure, programs and more. From completed responses to our volunteer survey we learned that:

• 99% rate their overall experience as excellent or good
• 98% said volunteering increased their understanding of the Conservancy’s role and structure
• 91% would recommend volunteering on The Greenway to others

Coming up this year we’ll be looking for more Special Project Assistants, which are paired with a specific Greenway Conservancy department to help with work in our office. We’ll also be utilizing our dedicated horticulture volunteers by providing more opportunities for them to take a leadership role or work in smaller groups with one of our horticulture staff. And to support our play-based education efforts, check out our new Play Ambassador volunteer position. What could be more fun than playing and volunteering at the same time? Thanks to all who volunteered in 2015 and we’re excited to get started with 2016 volunteers!