Looking for Volunteers!
The Lane County Butterfly Club is an all-volunteer group which can always use more help to keep existing activities running smoothly as well as to extend our reach. You do not need to be an expert on butterflies to help run our club.
If you would like to volunteer with us, please read below the list of tasks and projects that you could help with. Then please fill out this form letting us know what you’d like to help with. Also please let us know if you have particular knowledge, skills, or experience that you would like to put to use with our group.
Lane County Butterfly Club Volunteer Needs
The officers of our club are elected every October. We currently have 8 officers, 7 of which are past retirement age, so we are really looking for some younger officers to keep the club going when age-related issues arise. We would like to have younger “officers-in-training” shadowing some of our existing officers so they will be ready to step up when needed. In order to run for office or vote in the election, you will need to be a paid-up member of NABA National (see more here), but many tasks currently done by officers could be done by non-officers.
Computer tasks
We do not have an office, so our volunteers use our home computers to do butterfly club work online through our social media accounts, Google Workspace for Nonprofits, website, and Mailer Lite account (which we use for sending email newsletters). We can use help with the following computer tasks:
- Creating ongoing social media posts (Facebook and Instagram)
- Networking with other groups on social media and responding to questions
- Posting our events in on-line calendars
- Producing handouts for tabling
- Keeping our Google Workspace organized
- Updating our website
- Adding material to our website
- Running online registration for field trips and butterfly counts
- Writing and formatting newsletters
Monitoring Butterfly Populations
Our club collects annual data on butterfly species diversity and abundance through our NABA 4th of July Butterfly Counts. Similar in format to Christmas Bird Counts, our butterfly counts help document declines in butterfly populations which need to be addressed by further conservation actions. Three of our counts have been done every year for more than 30 years and our fourth count has happened every year for 23 years. Our butterfly counts take place on Saturdays in June and July. We are looking to train more people to be counters and also to lead groups.
Stewarding Native Milkweed Patches on Public Land
So far, our club has contracted with two public agencies to steward native milkweed patches which are crucial to the survival of the endangered monarch butterfly. One contract is with ODOT’s Adopt-a-Highway program where we monitor the largest patch of native Showy Milkweed in Lane County by doing litter pick-ups three times per year. This milkweed patch is located on Highway 126 between 28th and Mohawk in Springfield. The other Showy Milkweed patch we have adopted is in Golden Gardens Park in the Bethel area of west Eugene. Here we flag the plants, monitor their growth, and communicate with city mowing crews about when is the appropriate time to mow. Before the planned sports fields go in, we will dig up the milkweed plants which the sports field will cover and replant them in a safe area of the park. We need more volunteers to help with both of these projects. We also have the possibility of stewarding another milkweed patch at Umso park in north Eugene if we have enough volunteer energy.
Processing Milkweed Seeds
We give away native milkweed seeds at our meetings and also for local restoration projects. We have collected many milkweed pods which need to have the seeds extracted from the fluff. We can teach you how to do this by hand. Or, if you have some building skills, you could make us a milkweed seed extractor as shown here, and here are the plans.
Tabling at Events
Currently we table at only two community events: the Hardy Plant Sale in Eugene and Bikes to Blooms in Cottage Grove (both in May.) If we had more volunteers, we could table at more events, giving us an opportunity to recruit more members and volunteers, educate more people about butterflies, and raise money by selling more of our books, cards, and t-shirts. We also table at our four public meetings per year.
Finding Speakers for Our Public Meetings
At each of our four public meetings per year (generally in Oct, Nov, Feb, and Apr), we have a speaker. We could use help in identifying potential speakers, contacting them, and persuading them to present at our meetings
Presentation Technology
We would like to find a volunteer who can run the technology required for us to record the presentations at our meetings and post them on YouTube. In addition, it would be great if a volunteer could run the technology required for us to host a remote speaker and also host a meeting where the audience can be both in-person and remote. None of our current volunteers can do these tasks.
Selling Books
We have two local butterfly books which we sell to generate funds to run our club. We sell them on our website and then a volunteer needs to package the books sold and go mail them at a post office. We also have a volunteer who takes the books out to several retail outlets in Eugene and receives payment for them (or leaves an invoice and the payment is mailed.) We have an officer who is doing both of these tasks, but it would be nice to train a back-up volunteer and also maybe we could expand to more retail outlets. We could also use help selling our books at our events.
Networking with Other Groups
Networking with other local groups can help us to educate more people about butterflies, find speakers, publicize our events, recruit more members and volunteers, and sell more books to fund our club activities. Currently we are emailing 4 other groups about our schedule of events but with more volunteer energy our networking could expand.
Speaking about Butterfly Conservation to Other Groups
Our volunteers are creating a short slide show and script about butterfly conservation and our club’s work which can be presented to any local groups which are looking for speakers. The first such presentation will be to the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in March 2026. We could use help in finding other local groups who would like to see this presentation. New volunteers could also learn to give this presentation.