Jump to: REPORT
Introduction
Since its foundation in 2008, TSN Spring Challenge has always been a call to do more together. Each year, we challenge our stewards and our communities to spend a little longer caring for their local lands and waters, knowing from experience that action inspires action. Our role is to collect, calculate, and celebrate all this combined impact, inspiring our wide-reaching audience with the power of stewardship at scale and hopefully making field season as fun as possible along the way. Last year’s program rallied over 13,000 participants to record over 50,000 hours of stewardship! Revisit 2023 highlights at this link.
Who Can Participate?
This program warmly welcomes all caretakers of nature in all geographies and ecosystems. Whether you’re doing a little or a lot, we’re excited to have you here. Volunteers are a huge part of this effort each year, but professional stewards, you’re invited too! As long as the time you’re reporting is spent doing a qualifying activity, it absolutely counts.
Be a Part of #TSNspring
The single unit of stewardship effort for TSN Spring Challenge, whatever the category, is stewardship hours. If you spend 8 hours caring for your garden, removing trash from a local park, or volunteering for a TSN Member Community, that’s 8 hours into the program. If you and three friends do the same work in one quarter of the time, that’s (4 people x 2hrs =) 8 total hours also. Easy, right? But here’s the catch: we can only celebrate you if we know what you did and we only know what you did if you report it!
REPORT
You did the work, now let’s get it on the board! This year, we’re making it easier than ever to report your activities, with options to submit multiple categories at once or even send us your own files and formats.
Boosts are Back
We know how tempting it is to delay reporting and how much more inspirational it is for your peers if you don’t. To that end, TSN Spring Challenge Boosts are back after a successful debut in 2023 to make timely reporting an extremely compelling choice! Each Tuesday during this program, our staff will draw a random name from amongst all the people who submitted a report by 11:59pm Monday night. If the name drawn is an independent steward with no stated organizational affiliation, that person gets to choose any of the remaining tokens of appreciation we’ve procured for this effort. If the name drawn has claimed any group affiliation, they get their pick and the organization does, too!
To clarify, any number of reports in a single week still equals one name in our drawing and the number of hours per report does not impact your chances, so while it pays to report consistently, you can feel very free to combine each week’s reports into one entry at your discretion.
Currently Available Boosts from TSN and Generous Donors
Boosts Already Claimed in 2024 (the perks of reporting early and often!)
TSN Spring Challenge Honors
Whether you report one hour or ten thousand hours, we’re all on the same team and none of us can win alone when it comes to stewardship. That said, we’re always excited to make a big deal about the groups that take our “do more” challenge to heart and end up “doing the most.” In case you forgot or are looking for a little peer inspiration, here are your reporting standouts from TSN Spring Challenge 2023:
The Community Cup WINNER: Huron Arbor Cluster
Awarded to the TSN Member Community reporting the most total stewardship hours
The Root Cup WINNER: West Michigan Conservation Network
Awarded to the organization reporting the most total pounds of invasive plants removed
The Partner Cup WINNER: Milwaukee Riverkeeper
Awarded to the organization reporting the most total stewardship hours from outside our network family
The Teacher Cup WINNER: Great Lakes Islands Alliance
Awarded to the organization reporting the most total education hours
The Solo Cup WINNER: Whitney & Lisa Field
Awarded to the unaffiliated individual or family reporting the most total stewardship hours
TSN Resources You Might Find Helpful
Spread the Word
Of course, the more people who join us in this effort, the more powerful it becomes. If you’d like to support us by inviting more of nature’s caretakers into the fold, we’d certainly appreciate it! Digitally, you can share this webpage, tag your social posts with #TSNspring, or follow along with our TSN Facebook page for updates and engage away! Due to popular demand, we’ve also prepared flyers that you’re very welcome to print out and post wherever makes sense in your community.
Then and Now
What was once the Garlic Mustard Challenge and then the Spring Invasive Species Challenge bloomed anew as the TSN Spring Challenge in 2022, adding more ways to help so everyone can get outside and get involved during this vital season. While the program has grown in scope to include activities beyond its invasive species tradition, groups focused on that form of stewardship remain warmly welcomed and strongly encouraged to participate. What certainly hasn’t changed is the importance of this program, which since its first iteration in 2008 has pulled together over 39,000 people to create over $11 million in workhour value while removing over 2.4 million pounds of invasive plant species from local ecosystems.
In many ways, the spirit of TSN Spring Challenge is the spirit that formed The Stewardship Network itself. There is power in realizing that you are not alone in this work and there is power in showing the world just how much we can accomplish when we join forces. Some participants tell us that this effort helps with their own data management and some leverage the big group number to boost their own outreach efforts. Some have told us they’ve seen great benefits from being featured on TSN’s wide-reaching social channels and some say it just feels good to be part of it all. Whatever sparks your action, we love it and we thank you for your support!
Your Support Makes All of This Possible
TSN Spring Challenge is rivaled only by TSN Conference in the incredible amount of internal energy, time, and resources it consumes. Your donations make this deeply impactful program possible, so if you have the means to make a financial gift during this season, we would warmly welcome that at our Donate page.
