Conservancy Stewards Rebrand
Our core volunteer program gets a new look for its 18th birthday
Volunteers have been the heart and soul of our organization since its founding 18 years ago. Cultivating and growing our base volunteers is critical to supporting our mission, allowing us to properly care for our 26 parks and gardens and execute 200+ hours of programming annually. It takes 8,000 volunteer hours to maintain our 26 park gardens and 100 volunteers EACH to execute large scale events like Party for the Parks, Bloom Charleston and Teddy Bear Picnic. 2025 has been a year of getting back to our roots with engaging the community:
April, we hired a full time volunteer manager to oversee and build our volunteer community.
May-August were spent surveying, interviewing and listening to volunteers both brand new and OG about what they love about volunteering with the Conservancy and what could use some improvements.
In June, we reintroduced Weeding Wednesdays, an evening volunteer opportunity at Colonial Lake during the height of summer and were thrilled when 20+ of you showed up each week to sweat it out and get the weeds at Colonial Lake under control in preparation for the final planting of the revitalization. This led to the September launch of Neighbor Nights – where we host monthly volunteer evenings in different parks and neighborhoods across the City.
All of these conversations and events led to two big conclusions:
- Volunteers LOVE our parks
- Volunteers were craving a community and opportunities to learn and engage with us more than ever.
In late September, we launched a rebrand of our core volunteer program – now called the “Conservancy Stewards”. Conservancy Stewards are a community of likeminded individuals dedicated to working alongside Conservancy staff to keep Charleston’s parks beautiful. As a Conservancy Steward, you will receive:
- Personalized training in our volunteer system, processes and opportunities,
- Invitations to steward appreciation events
- Weekly “Roots” volunteer newsletter
- Conservancy Steward t-shirt
Learn about all our volunteer opportunities and how to become a Conservancy Steward HERE or contact our volunteer manager, Collin Howell at chowell@charlestonparksconservancy.org.
"I had a bed at the Magnolia Community Garden. During one of the weekly volunteer gardening events, another bed owner helped me clear around my bed to keep the area looking neat. It was a wonderful moment of community and support and is generally how I identify with the Parks Conservancy." ~ 2025 survey respondent