Alliance for Community Trees Mentor Exchange Program Connects Community Greening with California Groups

This year, Alliance for Community Trees hosted a mentor exchange program for members through a grant from the U.S. Forest Service. The mentor exchange program paired smaller non-profit groups with larger groups and allowed them to learn by travelling to their location and doing a site visit.

Guest post by Mark Cassini & Matt Shipley, co-founders of Community Greening.

Flying from South Florida to tour established urban forestry operations in California felt like time travel into the future. Thanks to the mentor exchange, we immersed ourselves in the day-to-day operations of Friends of the Urban Forest and Sacramento Tree Foundation and visited with California ReLeaf.  This was our opportunity to learn from decades of experience, diverse staff responsibilities, developed programming, healthy partnerships and most of all, high-functioning teams.  We even soaked up godfatherly advice at lunch with a pioneer in urban forestry, Ray Tretheway at Sac Tree says, “it’s all about relationships.”

In three days, we gathered years of veteran best practices to apply to Community Greening, our toddler start-up. This was a great reminder that we are part of a national network of dedicated professionals who care about trees and are available for support. We also noticed that hiring from your passionate volunteers is a good method. So, soon after we returned home, we made our first hire and Dre Dildy joined the Community Greening team. 

Thank you, Alliance for Community Trees and our California partners for showing us the future!  This was an unforgettable trip.

Learn how your organization can become an Alliance for Community Trees member, visit arborday.org.