Friends of Copperfield Nature Trails

Volunteering

We Need You!

To keep the park beautiful, several steps must be regularly taken. It takes a community to keep our community a community.

Officially, Friends of Copperfield Nature Trails sets up four to five days a year to go out and spend several hours cleaning trash, planting, mulching, and otherwise maintaining the trail. This isn’t quite enough though, so thankfully, members of our group (and also random park visitors) will go out of their way to pick up trash and report maintenance issues.

If you’d like to volunteer in one way or another, we’d love to have you. There are a few steps you can take to help make the park a better place. These steps are as follows:

Volunteer During Official Work Days

Volunteering during official work days is the most efficient way to volunteer to help out our park. The work days are usually from 9AM to 11 PM, and we typically have a list of things that need to be taken care of and are approved by the City of Austin through our partners Austin Parks Foundation and Keep Austin Beautiful. We use the GivePulse platform for volunteer events and use “Copperfield” in the event name to make searching for us easy: https://www.givepulse.com/

Volunteer On Your Own

If you’re at the trail on your own, and you just want to help, here’s a few things you can do to start:

  • Pick up trash that you find along the trail and dispose of properly in park trash cans, recycle cans, or in your home trash or recycle cans.
  • Clear any fallen branches that have fallen on the main trail
  • Make notes of any hazardous trail conditions and report them to 311 or message us through Give Pulse: https://givepul.se/k5ryqg
  • Learn about plants along the trail and document them on https://www.inaturalist.org/     this helps us and partners track and plan maintenance of our natural spaces.

Volunteer Reporting: use the Give Pulse Platform until we come up with a better way. Best to message us through Give Pulse to let us know what you did if approval of your volunteer hours are needed. Volunteer hour documentation helps us when it comes time to apply for grants. https://givepul.se/k5ryqg

18 responses to “Volunteering”

    • Hi James,

      Please send me your email address and I will add you to the distribution list so you will know about upcoming work days.

      Thank you for your willingness to volunteer!

      Linda Jones, Coordinator
      Friends of Copperfield Nature Trails

      Reply

  4. I’ve walked the trail for years. Today, 1/8/23, I walked the trail with my 2 young grandsons. A generous man stopped and showed us fossils. The 8 yr old was very interested and wants to volunteer! At minimum we plan to take bags with us and pick up trash.
    I would like to volunteer!

    Reply

  5. We met a kind gentleman early December 2022 who told us all about the history of the trail and the volunteer efforts 🙂 Would love to volunteer at the next cleanup! Also our dog Leo says hi!

    Reply

  6. Would love to be on the email list to get notified about future volunteer opportunities! I can bring out my partner 🙂 We love the trail so much.

    Reply

    • added. check posts on Copperfield website or at park kiosk for links to register to volunteer for events throughout the year. Glad you love the trail as much as we do.

      Reply

  7. Hey Deana,

    I would love to sign up as a volunteer!
    Would you please add me to your distribution list?
    Thank you,
    Kathleen

    Reply

    • done! you are on the list to receive email announcements. our next big event after Spring It’s My Park Day will be Keep Austin Beautiful Day in April. I’ll post the registration link on our webpage and send out the registration link to our email list, which you are now on. If you are interested in helping doing “micro” volunteer activities in between larger events, please let me know as we have many opportunities such as keeping 1400 tree saplings watered when it does not rain and water remains in the ponds, doing invasive plant work, maintaining flowerbeds at Blakeney pond, and picking up trash.

      Reply

  8. hi! my small work department is always looking to volunteer some of our time, can i be added to the email list for announcements?

    Reply

    • yes! nothing formal planned till November, but we will likely do something in late September or in October. We are doing some mini invasive plant work several times per month and watering tree saplings when we do not get rain over the summer while there is water in the ponds. email copperfieldtrails@gmail.com if ya’ll might want to get in on those activities outside of our larger occasional events. I could also help arrange for a KAB trash pick up event independent of larger occasional events-those have to be arranged 3+ weeks in advance to make sure we will have a trash pick up.

      Reply

  9. I met a gentleman in the park today and told my husband an I about the story of the trail. We love to spend our Sundays hiking with our dogs there so we will love to have the opportunity to volunteer.

    Reply

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