Alliance for Community Trees Day

Hear from urban forestry leaders as we kick off the conference:

• Matt Spitsen, Arbor Day Foundation
• Nausheen Iqbal, USDA Forest Service
• Scott Jamieson, Bartlett Tree Experts
• Meridith Perkins, Forest ReLeaf of Missouri

Urban Forestry as Community Infrastructure in Housing-Focused Organizations | Jack McDonnell, SavATree

Urban forestry is often treated as an amenity that follows housing and economic development rather than a core contributor to community well-being. This session draws on nearly a decade of experience embedding urban forestry within a community development and housing nonprofit in North St. Louis County. By positioning urban ecology alongside housing stability and economic opportunity, programs were designed for durability, long-term maintenance, and resident benefit. The presentation highlights lessons learned, program successes, and the value of integrating ecological planning early in redevelopment efforts, showing that trees, soils, and green infrastructure can function as foundational community assets rather than afterthoughts.

A New Approach to Neighborhood Management of Greenspace | Hunter Moore and Joe Wheelock, Bridging the Gap

This new collaborative model demonstrates how community-driven forestry and restoration can intersect on public lands, blending technical expertise in arboriculture, invasive plant management, and long-term forest health monitoring with a shared neighborhood commitment to stewardship. By working side by side, these teams demonstrate how urban natural areas can be actively managed to support biodiversity, improve canopy resilience, and connect people to the landscapes that create a more resilient Kansas City.

Tech-Enabled Neighborhood Volunteer Tree Care | Erin Godwin, STL Neighborhood Foresters

Staffing community forestry programs is often prohibitively expensive. STL Neighborhood Foresters (STLNF) organizes volunteers to care for street and park trees in the City of St. Louis by training them and providing a user-friendly web app with editable tree inventory and tree care tracking to support the planning of care and sharing of information with City Forestry staff. Tech enables more decentralized leadership, requires fewer resources, and provides greater oversight than would otherwise be possible for such a small organization. This presents an opportunity for other municipalities that currently have no tree care volunteer programs beyond annual planting events. 

Missouri Innovations in Community Forestry Q&A

Take a mid-morning break and enjoy light refreshments. It’s the perfect chance to recharge and catch up with fellow attendees before the next session.

From Volunteer Days to Strategic Partnerships: Designing Experiences That Deliver | Aleah Likas and Ashley Vernon, The Giving Grove

This interactive presentation explores how to design volunteer events that move beyond one-day activities to become meaningful, mutually beneficial partnerships. Drawing on case studies from The Giving Grove’s national network, participants will learn practical strategies to create engaging, efficient, and impactful volunteer experiences that benefit both the host organization and volunteer group/business. Attendees will leave with tools to align partner goals, leverage participant skill sets, and design adaptable events that strengthen relationships, enhance community impact, and extend value well beyond the volunteer event.

Growing Together: How Cities and Nonprofits Can Enhance Community Forestry | Sharen Hauri, City of South Salt Lake, and Amy May, TreeUtah

Ask most city officials what they know about community forestry, and you'll get an honest answer: not much. Ask most urban forestry nonprofits what they know about how a city actually works and you'll get the same answer. This is not a criticism. It's an opportunity. Cities and nonprofits have a lot to gain by integrating their work in community forestry. Drawing on a real, ongoing collaboration between South Salt Lake and TreeUtah, this session will offer an honest, practical, and energizing look at what genuine partnership can accomplish.
 

Building Strategic Partnerships Q&A

Take this time to connect, share, and learn from peers during a facilitated working lunch. Be ready to participate in a small-group conversation focused on real-world challenges, ideas, and solutions in community forestry. Each table is designed to encourage open dialogue and practical takeaways so you can leave with new insights, fresh perspectives, and connections to carry forward in your work.

A Practitioner's Guide to Equitable Urban Greening | Lincoln Larson, North Carolina State University, and Sally Ross, Black Environmental Prosperity Group

From 2020 through 2023, our research team at NC State University worked with a variety of federal, state, municipal, and NGO partners across the United States to study best practices for maximizing social equity in tree planting initiatives. In 2025, we published a Practitioner’s Guide based on our findings. In this session, we will provide an overview of this new resource and explore key recommendations for enhancing equitable and community-centered urban greening, highlighting specific actions that could be taken and next steps for research and practice.

Beyond the Tree Count: Community-Centered Approaches to Urban Forestry | Rachele Lopez, Justice Outside

What happens when you let communities define what urban forestry looks like? You get fruit trees feeding refugee families. Cultural burns honoring Indigenous land stewardship. Drone pilots mapping tree canopy. Bat nurseries and monarch butterfly gardens. Through Justice Outside's grantmaking partnerships with the USFS and William Penn Foundation, we've funded 35+ Black, Indigenous, and People of Color-led organizations taking radically different, deeply effective approaches to building healthier urban forests. This session explores what we've learned about trust-based grantmaking, intersectional programming, and why the most impactful forestry work often doesn't look like forestry at all.

How to Plant a Dual Language Urban Forestry Program | Layla Farahbakhsh, Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council

In Providence, Rhode Island, low-income, predominantly Spanish-speaking neighborhoods bear much of the brunt of the effects of low canopy coverage. The Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council has developed a dual-language urban forestry program, Árboleros, to learn with neighbors how to mitigate and correct these effects by caring and advocating for local trees. In this presentation, you’ll hear how we harnessed the momentum from established classes, collaborated with partners, and encouraged resident leadership. We’ll share what we planted, what we pruned, and what we are excited to see grow in the upcoming seasons. 

Why "No" is a Great Answer | Becky Pobst, Friends of Grand Rapids Parks

Accepting "no" from residents during a tree planting event is an important part of building trust with our neighbors. Learn how we predict denial rates and plan for them, how we engage with residents who do not want trees, and how we ensure that our volunteers understand the importance of respecting neighbors' expertise.

Cultivating Trust Q&A

Take a moment to relax and network with fellow attendees.

Panel: Cultivating Community Forestry Across The Rural West | Lance Davisson and Emma Stammer, Trees Idaho; Amy May, TreeUtah; and Lisa Ortega, Nevada Plants

What does it take to grow and sustain community forestry programs when your nearest partner is 400 miles away? Three nonprofit leaders from Utah, Idaho, and Nevada pull back the curtain on building community forestry programs across some of the most geographically and culturally diverse terrain in the country. From tribal nation partnerships to communities where "environmentalism" feels like fighting words, this moderated panel explores the honest, hard work of meeting people where they are, and developing and sustaining trust. Panelists represent organizations at different stages of growth, offering something for everyone, from scrappy startups to seasoned statewide networks. 

Reconnecting the City: A Data-Driven Blueprint for Urban Wildlife Corridors | Matthew Marchese, Casey Trees

Urban wildlife corridors are essential infrastructure for the health of our cities, yet most municipalities lack a systematic approach to identifying and restoring them. Casey Trees developed a replicable GIS-based workflow to map the safest pathways for pollinators and wildlife through Washington, DC — and subsequently secured nearly $500,000 in grant funding to implement those corridors by planting native trees and gardens that connect larger urban green spaces — demonstrating how urban forestry organizations anywhere can translate spatial data into targeted, equity-centered conservation action. 

Planning Projects Like Parties: Blueprints to Successful Community Forestry Events | Cate Hughes and Jacob McDonald, Trees Atlanta

Trees Atlanta staff will present on a handful of their most popular events, programs, and projects that have enabled them to plant nearly 11,000 trees with a dedicated following of volunteers. These events can be easily replicated in many of our partners' cities and service sites, and attendees are encouraged to "steal" these concepts and adapt them as needed!
 

Matt Spitsen, Arbor Day Foundation

Keep the conversations going and make the most of your time with peers. Swap ideas, spark new collaborations, and connect with people who understand your work and challenges. From quick introductions to deeper conversations, this is your chance to build relationships that last well beyond ACT Day.