Ways to Support
The Southeastern Grasslands Restoration team benefits from community support in many ways. We are grateful for every hour spent volunteering, every message shared on social media, and every dollar donated!
Share the message on social media
Help SGI spread the word about conservation practices by following us and sharing our content on social media. Every like and every share helps raise awareness of our important work to save southeastern grasslands. Click the icons below to find our pages!
In-Kind Donations
SGI benefits immensely from in-kind donations. These can be equipment, matching funds, or matching restoration efforts. Please select the drop down for descriptions of in-kind donation needs for each program, and please contact Chris Oberholster if you have an in-kind donation you would like to make to SGI.
Restoration Program
Native Plant Materials Program
-
Travel Equipment
Restoration Equipment
Hatchet
No-Till Seed Drill with Native Seed Box
Vise for Workbench
Prescribed Fire Equipment
Invasive Plant Management Tools
-
The SGI restoration team benefits immensely from matching funds, or matching restoration efforts. Please contact Chris Oberholster if you have a matching fund donation you would like to make to SGI.
-
SGI’s restoration program benefits from matching restoration efforts in our restoration work. When institutions, private landowners, and government agencies can contribute labor, resources, and land to our restoration work, we become stronger applicants for funding. Please contact Jeremy French if you or your organization are interested in contributing matching restoration effort to SGI’s program.
Volunteer Program
Research Program
-
Travel Equipment
GPS Units
Research Equipment
Laptop Computers
Tablet Computers
-
Field cold storage - coolers
Monitoring Equipment
Field Stools
Meter Tapes (100m long)
Pin Flags
Umbrellas
Tents
Video and photo cameras
-
High powered microscopes and cameras
Insect Specimen Preparation Supplies (Insect Pins, Cornell Insect Drawers etc.)
Plant Specimen Preparation Supplies (Mounting Paper, Glue, Labels, Archival Storage Folders,
Software
-
SGI can benefit from philanthropic funds to match grant opportunities to support our research work. Matching funds are invaluable. Please contact Chris Oberholster if you are interested in matching our grant funds with philanthropic funds or grants.
-
SGI benefits from research in which partners are also contributing to the research effort. If you are interested in matching research efforts with SGI’s research team’s work, please contact Chris Oberholster.
-
The native plant materials program is looking for industrial grade curtains to block dust and sound in the seed laboratory.
-
The seed laboratory is in need of more freezers to preserve our seed collections for extended periods of time. The following are the kinds of freezers we need:
Regular chest freezer
Ultra low temperature freezer (-20, -80)
-
The Native Plant Materials Program can always use more field supplies that aid in seed collecting work. These include
Mesh
Paper sacs and bags
-
A flail-vac native seed harvesting tractor attachment will help us significantly in our seed collecting work.
-
The seed lab can always use more soil sieves to help us hand clean our seeds.
-
Our seed laboratory welcomes the donation of seed cleaning and processing equipment. A current need is Westrup LA-LS Screen Cleaner or similar model.
-
An SUV sized vehicle to transport plant materials collections and for travel across our focal region to collect seeds will benefit our program.
Indigenous Land Stewardship Program
-
The SGI tribal program seeks to partner with private foundations, federal agencies, individual tribal land owners, and environmental NGOs whose missions align with SGI. If you fall into one of these categories, please contact us. Partnerships that build capacity for tribally led initiatives and that elevate tribal priorities for grassland restoration are our priority as we build our capacity.
-
Please reach out via email with general questions to sgi-tribal-group@segrasslands.org.
For questions regarding land restoration, please contact Corlee at corlee.thomashill@segrasslands.org
For questions regarding native seeds and seed saving, please contact Katie at katie.smitheaster@segrasslands.org
For questions regarding Native American history and research, please contact Gabrielle at gabrielle.patterson@segrasslands.org.
Volunteer with us
Please check out our volunteer calendar for opportunities to join our restoration and native plant materials teams and learn the ropes of grassland conservation in practice with hands-on restoration field work. Our goal is to have volunteers be trained as a part of our staff to eventually co-steward and manage restoration of areas on SGI’s sites. Click the button below to sign up to receive updates from SGI on volunteer events!
Schedule by VolunteerHub
Donate
Every donation counts in supporting our work to save the forgotten grasslands of the Southeast - preserving the biodiversity of southeastern grasslands with hands-on sustainable and regenerative restoration work - supporting Indigenous-led conservation practices - native plant and seed saving - studying grassland ecosystems - and educating the next generation of conservationists.
The following link will take you to a link to donate to SGI, and we are very grateful for your support of our work.