Thriving as a wildlife volunteer in 2026
This post was originally shared as a members-only training manual by Program Director, Jared Frasier.
Limit your volunteered time to where your core passions are.
Our members who are consistently the most effective at creating and attaining great volunteer goals limit their volunteering to their core conservation passions.
What appears to be an uncanny knack to meet critical moments of need is really that simple. It is not luck. Their laser-focus on what makes them feel alive and connected to the natural world makes them wildly effective (and rare) conservationists.
The simplicity of this truth is what trips up most well-intentioned people and teams — especially during times of economic and societal turmoil when time is even more costly to give.
Your most precious asset, whether as an individual or as a company, is your time.
Everybody wants it. Everything in our world is built to take it from you.
When your time is given up easily, your passions are not pursued, reenforced, or shared with the rest of the world. You are less effective. Your authenticity fades.
By limiting your volunteered time to your core passions, you tap into your deepest strengths and authentic capacity to support conservation.
There are countless ways to volunteer your time to conservation. We certify our members’ conservation work as taking place in the realms of: Boots on the Ground, Advocacy, Education, and Access… but within those four categories there are near limitless options for volunteering.
How do I know what my core conservation passions are?
This is something I love assisting our members with! We are always helping people and teams discover (and often, re-discover) their core conservation passions.
As a member, you can set up a call with us at any time to work on this — it is part of what our memberships are for!
We have a simple rubric that we use to help you get to the root drivers for your desire to volunteer in conservation.
For businesses:
This can often be a defining moment in building team cohesion and some truly potent programming for internal and external marketing. I am immensely proud of what this practice has done for quality of life improvements for our business members and their employees with very minimal lift required on their part.
For individuals:
These calls are an absolute treat for me. I love helping folks dial down to what makes them come alive in the outdoors and the deep emotions that drive them to point of wanting to give their time back to conservation and conservation causes. You have one life and I consider it an immense privilege to help you do the most with it.
Set up a call: contact(at)fishandwildlife.org
Don’t dream alone: Shared dreams do bigger things
“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
- Rachel Carson, ‘Silent Spring’ (1962)
I have a springtime tradition with my kids. As soon as the first warm(ish) day hits our little Montana town, I bust out the maps and we start planning and dreaming about our upcoming year together outdoors.
Every year, their hopes and interests for these outings change as they grow and as new people and passions come into their lives. So, our adventure goals change. Having them be a part of our planning has led to far more memorable adventures than if I had just planned everything myself. What their choices have cost me in grey hairs, they have more than made up in smile wrinkles.
What we do is informed and enriched by our collective “why.”
And the data from our membership prove this principle to be true:
Passion shared is passion multiplied.
Our members that routinely accomplish the most impactful conservation volunteer projects and successful conservation advocacy/education campaigns are the ones that work hard to work well with others.
For businesses: This means internally and externally.
Internally: Engage your teams in the goal setting for your volunteer efforts.
For mid-large companies: We recommend (at minimum) annually surveying ALL essential team members to discover their ever-evolving interests and connections to conservation. It does wonders for team morale while also often revealing hidden strengths and opportunities within the team. We have helped many business members build these surveys out specific to their needs and would love to help you do the same. Contact us for help building one for your team: jared(at)fishandwildlife.org
For small companies: If you are a company of few (or a company of you), we recommend getting your close friends and family involved in the goal-setting. Odds are, you were going to drag them along anyway! They are used to the business taking time away from their relationship with you — this is an opportunity to give them genuine agency over how the business gives back. Partners, close friends, and especially children really benefit from being involved in deciding how you volunteer as a business.
Externally: Engage your customers and partners to help you refine your conservation goals.
Asking your customers for feedback on how you volunteer your time shows a level of care and authenticity that has all but gone away in modern cause-marketing. Yet, it is something we see our most effective members do. Requesting and collecting their input is very simple, and we have found it to be appreciated when it is done organically (or at least when it feels organic). Your communications around how you volunteer (a topic we will specifically tackle in an upcoming module) will benefit from this holistic connection to your customer base. You can also contact us for help building these with your marketing team: jared(at)fishandwildlife.org
With budget volatility looking like the new norm for conservation groups, your partnership is more valuable than ever. Especially as they look to fill staff funding gaps with skilled volunteers. A close relationship with your best conservation group partners ensures that you are well informed in your goal-setting. Even the brands that claim to do conservation work on their own with their own projects and initiatives require non-profit partners on the back-end. Make a bigger splash by including them conservation partner organizations (and ensure brand affinity with their supporter base) on the front-end.
For individuals: Connect through conservation.
If you enjoy time with your family and friends, you are going to love the experience of goal-setting for your volunteer work, together. Some of the greatest conservation work ever accomplished was started by a small group of friends and family. The biggest, most impactful conservation causes today were originally formed around dining room tables by small groups of friends trying to tackle a seemingly insurmountable conservation challenges together… as volunteers.
I hate this one, but it is annoyingly important: Read the emails from your favorite conservation causes so that you are informed. I know, that is a lot to ask, but it is a defining trait of the most impactful individual conservationists I have ever worked with. Especially with social media apps actively suppressing the reach of non-profit groups unless they pay. Yes, it means it is up to you to sort through a lot of coal to find the diamonds. But, it is worth it to be in-the-know when the opportunities to align with your personal goals arise.
But, isn’t there romance in the story of a lone wolf, volunteering for conservation on their own in the wilderness? Sure.
Are lone wolves as effective for conservation as those that collaborate at this deep level? No — not by a long shot.
Protect your passion.
“My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends
It gives a lovely light!”
— Edna St. Vincent Millay, ‘First Fig’ (1920)
When times are hard, either personally or professionally, our capacity to effectively volunteer declines.
That is just a fact, and no one is immune to it.
Even us freaks who take these extremely low paying non-profit jobs while we work nights and weekends chasing the “I gotta do something good for the world!” bug… we are less effective conservationists when our home lives or the outside world stretch us thin.
When you volunteer beyond the capacity your current life situation allows, you burnout.
Full stop.
Burnout is, essentially, the death of your passion.
And, in my experience, the only thing worse than having a shortage of volunteers is having a glut of burned-out volunteers.
Conservation volunteer burnout is a topic I have written a lot about, read a lot about, watched at long range, and experienced first-hand. Sometimes, it is only as benign as getting someone to “quiet-quit” their volunteer role or a brand to silently end their partnerships. But I have also seen it fester and explode into toxicity that derails entire organizations, divides business partners, loses great employees, ends marriages, and even leads to suicide via the depression that always accompanies it.
And, if that wasn’t enough, it is also contagious.
Back in my swarthy youth, I was a life guard and kayak guide. One of the first things you are taught is that a drowning swimmer will always drag down the rescuer. They don’t mean to… it is just what the body does.
A volunteer who is burning out does the same thing. They drag anyone who is in proximity to them, down and out of the fight. They keep sinking together, dragging along more of their comrades, until their life situation changes — one way or another.
Every month, I run through a revolving roster of people in our network who are in various stages of volunteer/professional burnout. I hate it, but I have a duty to protect our members from the contagion.
Tracking the burnout in our network has also helped develop a dataset for those who seem immune to it.
These are individuals and brands who year-after-year put up incredible conservation volunteer work, but who I have never once seen even the slightest hint of loss of passion. We have business members of various sizes who see increased employee buy-in thanks to their conservation volunteer programs, versus the productivity drop-off that so often accompanies increased expectations.
The truth is, they are not immune — they have active avoidance of it.
The Passion / Profession Paradox:
The more stressed you are, the more different your volunteering needs to be from your job.
Understanding and following this principle will protect you (and your team) from burnout, more than any other best-practice I have seen. In the tens of thousands of hours of volunteered time we have certified, no one maxim has proven more true for individual members and employees of our business members.
For businesses:
If you or an employee is already stressed in your personal or professional life, DO NOT use day job skills as the primary means of volunteering. You or your employee are all but guaranteed to slip into burnout.
We often see it happen with social media managers who have to handle extra off-hours online conversations outside their normal knowledge wheelhouse and business hours.
We see it with sales people helping with fundraising.
We see it with media teams building media projects for conservation groups.
We see it with customer service reps being asked to help host conservation group banquets.
We see it most (by far) with owners, managers, and leadership team members taking board/committee seats with conservation groups.
Discover if you have this risk, for yourself or your employees in this goal-setting stage.
And, revisit this risk assessment before making any future volunteer programming changes.
For individuals:
The same rule applies, but is doubly important if you already work for a non-profit. It might feel like a break, because you aren’t dealing with the same accountability/fundraising factors as your day job, but it is the exact opposite of a break.
If working for a non-profit for low wages is like running a marathon, volunteering for another one by doing the same type of tasks is like adding sprints on the side.
I get it. You are tough. A real animal.
But wounded animals bite.
Hopefully, one of those two metaphors helps you understand the risk to yourself and the causes you are passionate for.
We want you in what Theodore Roosevelt called “the arena” with us for as long as possible. That means adapting how you engage with volunteering to meet your current needs.
Setting realistic expectations for yourself as part of an annual goal-setting process can help ensure that we are in this together for the long-haul.
In Summary:
Limit your volunteering goals to be centered around your core passions.
Get your people involved in your volunteer goal-setting.
Follow the “Passion/Profession Paradox” or risk burnout.
Remember that both business and individual members may utilize FWV staff assistance to help with your volunteer work. Our purpose is to help you accomplish the most good possible with your volunteer time — for wildlife, for your community, but most importantly; for you.