Your volunteers already give the labor. What they can't donate is the lumber, the gravel and the plants, and the season decides when the work has to be done. A private request buys the materials, from the people who already walk your trails.
A land trust's wetland trail washed out in last spring's storms. Rebuilding 300 feet of boardwalk takes lumber and hardware that cost $4,800, and volunteers will do the building. The work has to be finished before nesting season begins on April 1st, when the area closes until fall.
The trust doesn't need a crew. It has one. It needs $4,800 of lumber before April 1st.
A volunteer workday brings the hands. A request brings the people who would rather give money than a Saturday: neighbors who walk the trail, the families of your volunteers, the birders who use the boardwalk every morning.
It also behaves differently from a workday:
| What the group keeps | 100% of every contribution. The 6.9% fee is added at checkout and paid by the contributor, not taken out of what you receive. |
| When it arrives | Standard payouts reach the bank in 2-3 business days. |
| Who sees it | Only the people you send the link to, unless you choose to make it public. Nothing is listed or searchable by default. |
The season sets the deadline here, and it does not move: nesting season, the planting window, the ground freezing. Send the request early enough for the money to arrive and the materials to be ordered before the window closes.
Nothing to create a request. Nothing to send it. The only fee is the 6.9% a contributor pays on top of their own contribution — so a $100 contribution costs the giver $106.90 and your group receives $100.00.
Materials for land the public uses, bought so volunteers can do the work. Six kinds of project, and what each one actually needs money for:
Land trusts. Fencing and a gate for a newly protected parcel, a sign at the trailhead, a culvert where the access road crosses a stream. The land is protected; opening it to people is the part a request pays for.
Trails. Bridge decking, gravel for a section that turns to mud every spring, steps and water bars for an eroding slope. The trail crew brings the tools and the Saturdays; the request brings the material.
Parks. Benches, a new roof for a picnic shelter, fencing along a creek, run by a friends group or a neighborhood association. A community garden belongs here when it sits on public or shared land and a community or conservation group runs it: lumber for raised beds, soil, a water line. A garden at a school or a church belongs on those guides instead.
Cleanups. Bags, gloves and grabbers, a dumpster, and the hauling fee to take away what volunteers pull out of a river or a vacant lot.
Wildlife habitat. Native plugs and seed for a meadow, nest boxes, fencing that keeps deer off a restoration site while it takes hold.
Tree planting. Saplings by the hundred, tree tubes and stakes, mulch, and a water tank for the first summer. The order has to be in before planting season, which is the date to put on the request.
Contributions start at $100. That is the scale this is built for: a neighbor covering a few sheets of decking, two families splitting a load of gravel. Forty-eight people, and 300 feet of boardwalk is paid for.
Keep running them. They do something a request doesn't — they get people out on the land.
A request is what you reach for when one of these is already underway and the materials still need buying before the season closes.
