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For stewardship organizations
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Trailfunds helps stewardship partners manage fieldwork, volunteer activity, and public-facing engagement in one platform.
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Our vision and mission
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01
Create and manage projects with a clear operational structure your team can actually use.
02
Coordinate field work and document what happened on the ground—including hours, outcomes, and on-the-ground activity—tracked through work sessions.
03
Publish events and translate internal stewardship work into a public engagement layer supporters can follow.
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What organizations can do
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Set up projects with location, goals, and internal structure so your team can coordinate work clearly.
Manage work sessions so crews can record field activity, hours, and outcomes in one operational record.
Coordinate volunteer events, centralize registrations, and make it easier for people to show up.
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OUR PROCESS
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Guided walkthrough
This is the workflow many stewardship teams follow on Trailfunds: plan and organize work, coordinate crews in the field, capture progress as it happens, then turn that work into reporting that can be shared with partners, land managers, funders, and the public. Use the outline to move between chapters—each video continues the same operational story from the previous step.
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Trusted by
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Trailfunds works with partners across the region to deliver trails programs, stewardship, and boots-on-the-ground impact.
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OUR TEAM
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We partner with trail crews, nonprofits, and volunteers across the region to keep funding flowing and communities connected to the work that matters.
Jared Vandeventer
CEO
Jared is a software engineer, husband, and father of four boys. He spends most weekends exploring the mountains with his family. After building other people's startups for five years, Trailfunds became his sole vocation at the end of 2024. He also serves as Board President.
Chris Rizzo
Advisor
Chris is an avid outdoor enthusiast and is passionate about stewardship and conservation. He provides strategic perspective and occasional guidance as needed.
Nicolette Makris
Digital Strategy & Community Engagement Manager
Nicolette brings a strong background in environmental advocacy and digital storytelling to Trailfunds. With a Bachelor's degree in Environmental Studies, she combines subject-matter knowledge with a passion for outdoor conservation. Nicolette leads Trailfunds' social media strategy, where she crafts compelling narratives that connect users with trail stewardship efforts across the country.
Tara
Director of Partnerships
Tara leads partnership programs, helping organizations amplify their impact through Trailfunds while still finishing her degree in Applied Business Management with a focus on Environmental Sustainability. She’s passionate about preserving the outdoors and adventuring with her family.
Becca
Project Manager
Becca is an avid trail runner and rock climber with roots in nonprofit outdoor stewardship and recreation. After a stint as a software engineer working on SaaS products, she is thrilled to merge her love of the outdoors with her technical skills as a project manager at Trailfunds.
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Leadership
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Trailfunds is guided by a board of deeply committed volunteers who bring operational, fundraising, and conservation expertise.
We’re looking for additional board members with deep stewardship or conservation experience—hit the contact form to introduce yourself.
Matthew Podolinsky
Board Member
Matthew brings over a decade of experience in public land management, recreation infrastructure, and collaborative stewardship work across the Intermountain West. He currently serves as Utah Program Coordinator for the National Forest Foundation.
Andrea Hassler
Board Member
Andrea blends nonprofit governance expertise with a deep commitment to protecting public lands and volunteer-driven stewardship through her work with Access Fund.
Kelly Schmidt
Board Member
Kelly is a veteran parks and recreation executive with 25+ years leading trails, open-space, and community development projects across public, nonprofit, and private partnerships, and now serves as a Regional Community Development Manager at CEI Engineering.
Set up your organization to coordinate projects, document field work in work sessions, and publish volunteer events within a stewardship workflow built for real field operations. Paid software modules include a 60-day free trial before billing begins.
Register your organizationTell us about your organization, volunteer interest, or how we can collaborate to keep trails safe and accessible.
“Trailfunds is a useful tool for our organization to highlight the impactful work that our volunteers and staff perform on our public lands. We can document projects by detailing the type of work being performed, how many hours have been spent on the project, and the benefits our work provides to the community.”
— Chase LaCroix, San Juan Mountains Association
“Trailfunds is tackling a real bottleneck in the stewardship world — it’s still too hard for everyday trail users to find meaningful volunteer opportunities or support the organizations doing the work. I’m excited about the platform because it brings giving, volunteering, and stewardship into one place in a way that could genuinely stabilize and grow support for under-resourced outdoor nonprofits.”
— Mick Daniel, San Louis Valley Great Outdoors
“Trailfunds has become a valuable platform for helping us clearly document and communicate the impact of our stewardship work. It allows us to capture the scope of our projects, the type of work being completed, volunteer hours invested, and the tangible benefits these efforts provide to public lands and local communities. Just as importantly, Trailfunds helps bridge a long-standing gap between trail users and the organizations doing the work on the ground by making it easier to discover volunteer opportunities and support stewardship financially. That combination of impact reporting, engagement, and accessibility has real potential to strengthen the long-term sustainability of public lands and the organizations that take care of them, like RMFI.”
— Sam Hinkle, Rocky Mountain Field Institute