Your Fall Conservation Volunteering Planner
by: Jared Frasier
Summer is officially over, but that does not mean the chance to volunteer for conservation is!
In fact, nearly all the late-summer volunteering projects and events we shared last month are still available, as well as some season-specific events and field projects that our members absolutely love being a part of.
A quick note for team managers about having your team volunteer in the fall:
In our experience, getting your team out volunteering for conservation in the fall is something we can only recommend on a team-by-team basis, not generally across-the-board.
If you have employees with kids in school, early fall might be their most stressful and calendar-packed time of the year (directly: their work for you might be the only stable thing in their schedules right now). If you plan the volunteer project to be something that will bring them peace, it can be a serious boon to their morale. If you waffle on the project or if the change in schedule adds to their work stress, it will have the oposite effect on them. Either way, they will tell their friends about it and it will have an impact on their opinion of their position with your brand.
For teams that have a lot of students in the ranks, you probably are in the middle of a major turnover season. We recommend getting them outside together on a river, beach, park, or trail cleanup. It is low hassle, there are ample local organizations able to host one for you, and it gets your team working together on a fun project in a way that really helps them get to know each other and you better. The trick is picking a time that works with all their schedules…
If you have a lot of hunters in your team: Fall might not be the time for a group project, even during the workweek. But, you already knew that. ;)
Whatever your team’s makeup, we love helping our members plan around employee needs for conservation volunteering. It can make all the difference between empowering and showing your gratification to your team and community… or accidentally burning them out. If you are not already a member, signing up is easy. We will help you, from there, leveraging our experience from large corporations down to 1-person garage side-hustles.
The volunteer “Fall fall off” is your opportunity!
Over the last near-decade, we have collected data on how our members have volunteered tens of thousands of hours to conservation throughout the year. In 2019, we first reported on the “Fall fall off” that conservation groups experience after Labor Day in the US (Labour Day for our members in the North). Since then, it has only become more dramatic:
Average hours volunteered per month per member employee:
January, February, March and October are mainly held up by our coastal members doing cleanups and our members that help put on local fundraising banquets for conservation groups. Otherwise, that summer peak would be entirely alone… and the “Fall fall off” would be near total.
This is not new phenomena. The start of the school year and the shorter days has always meant a drop off in community engagement for volunteer projects. Conservation groups have been aware and built programming for school clubs and community eduction/outreach that serve their mission well during this time of year.
However, especially in the US, funding cuts to collegiate programming is meaning that a lot of these projects are currently sitting in the calendar without volunteer teams. It is a perfect opportunity for you to step in and fill the gap!
Even if your local colleges have kept their conservation / environmental project programming, your local ecosystems are still likely pretty beat up after a summer of use. In 2025, an unholy combination of tighter personal budgets for recreation activities and stripped public land and wildlife agency management budgets means that your local habitat areas need way more help than in years past. Yet another opportunity for you to pick up that slack!
Groups are, to the best of their abilities (despite many of their budgets have been negatively impacted by the Executive Orders / Federal cuts, too), building opportunities for you to do outsized good for wildlife this year with your time. We are seeing a massive spike in habitat projects open to the community this fall, over years past.
Fall is for Hosting Community-Building Events
Imagine it: The first crisp Friday evening in October.
You and your team are at a local park (or brewery). Or maybe at your location, if you are a brick’n mortar.
Everyone on the team has invited their friends and family.
Your team put fliers up around town in September that you were hosting a free community evening for your favorite local conservation cause and folks have shown up, en masse.
You have team members taking shifts helping with a raffle and running games and activities for kids, but everyone is relaxed and mingling with the community and the conservation cause’s team members.
Maybe you catered it. Maybe your local regulations allow you to have that one team member who is a BBQ whiz run the grill. Maybe it’s just hotdogs over campfire rings. In any case, the food and refreshments are great, but not the main point of the event.
You could have some local personalities or team members tell some stories about the wildlife or habitat area that the group’s work helps. Or, maybe you just give a pitch to support that cause.
You raise a respectable amount of money for the conservation cause, but more importantly, you built community.
Do this.
At least once, do this.
We have seen hosting free fall events like this do incredible things for our members and the causes they care about.
As an individual volunteer: Ask your favorite conservation causes if they need help hosting a night like this. Fall is the time to do it, but they might just be missing the bandwidth to make it happen after a busy summer. You and your friends can pick up that slack.
There is no need to reinvent the wheel.
We have experience helping businesses of all sizes (and even individual groups of friends) host these kind of evenings and connect with conservation causes. Fall is a great time of year to get out volunteering for wildlife, and we would love to help you do it.