Why Giving Matters: The Impact of Your Donation to Nashville Tree Conservation Corps
Every donation made to Nashville Tree Conservation Corps supports our mission to promote, preserve, protect, and plant Nashville's urban forest! In this post, we’ll explore what that means in practice by connecting your charitable contributions to the real action we take to support tree care across the city.
Donating for a Reason
Donating to any cause is often a personal decision, and motivations can come from what is or isn’t around us. Our donors share our concern and desire to preserve and strengthen Nashville’s urban canopy: our neighborhood trees, public parks, and the many benefits we all enjoy where they’re present.
Canopy coverage isn’t evenly spread across the city, and trees are being lost as decisions to build often come with decisions to cut, in addition to old trees being removed due to age. Mature specimens lost today were planted decades ago, and their disappearance is noticeable and impactful when it happens, whether the removal was necessary or not.
Planting trees and maintaining them throughout their lifetime is an ongoing job with implications for years and generations ahead of us. Two of our donors, Tyler and Madeline, shared their own hopes for their children’s experiences growing up under Nashville’s canopy in our article, “Funding Trees for the Future: These NTCC Donors Share Their Story.”
Your Donations in Action
Donations received by Nashville Tree Conservation Corps contribute to our operating fund, which helps us pay for:
Community outreach and communication
Administrative costs such as our tree sale, tree planting activities, our small number of paid employees, and other operating fees and expenses.
Arborist services for Shelby Ave Arboretum maintenance and tree care access
Tree representation at the city and state level
Tree care across Nashville (towards the end of this post, we break down how your donations go to supporting tree care, like watering, conservation education, and legislation development!)
NTCC is the only organization in Nashville dedicated to advancing tree policy while also coordinating reforestation efforts. We operate across three interconnected areas:
Policy: Advancing legislation to reduce clearcutting, preserve heritage trees, and strengthen enforcement.
Preservation: Protecting mature trees that provide the greatest environmental benefits.
Planting: Expanding equitable tree canopy through targeted planting initiatives.
A well-protected canopy gives trees the opportunity to grow into big, old specimens, while ongoing planting and maintenance protect the city from canopy loss due to a lack of replacement. Since 2019, NTCC has helped add approximately 6,000 trees across Davidson County!
A full, healthy urban forest can also produce a range of impactful ecosystem services that maintain the quality of life in an area, including temperature moderation, air filtration, stormwater management, and wildlife hosting. This is in addition to the psychological and physical health benefits that a robust, beautiful landscape offers residents.
Advocating for Nashville’s Trees
From our inception, Nashville Tree Conservation Corps has been a proactive advocate for the canopy. We supported important canopy preservation legislation that passed in 2019: a tree density law that raised requirements for commercial and multifamily developments to plant and preserve more trees per site (a 60% increase!).
Our advocacy and on-the-ground efforts also helped pass a 2022 ordinance requiring at least 20% tree preservation on certain new developments, which created significant outcomes that we profile in our blog post, “Conservation Development in Nashville: Preservation Success Stories.”
We look for inspiration from other cities to see where there is room to improve Nashville’s own approach to urban forest management: Austin offers us a model on managing heat with trees, and a look at Charlotte’s urban forest helped us examine how city funding of urban forestry programs can impact canopy care.
We’re also looking at Nashville itself to identify unmet needs. Our recently published Shade Report helps us see which public parks are in most need of shade, which can be improved in many cases with more tree presence. We’re highlighting the need for shade around schools [link pending blog approval], as well!
NTCC has also been very actively involved with Winter Storm Fern cleanup and the NES forestry program restructuring that has followed, along with other Nashville environmental groups and Metro Nashville. This situation shows how important it is to coordinate tree maintenance standards in the urban environment between infrastructure managers, like our electric utility, and tree care managers, including both Metro Nashville and the many tree-owning residents of the city.
Learn more about advocating for the canopy in our article, “Advocating for Canopies: What Does It Mean to Speak for the Trees?”
Supporting the Nashville Tree Conservation Corps’ Work in Our Shared Canopy
Join us on October 17th for An Evening Among the Trees, an intimate gathering with NTCC that provides us with an opportunity to connect with you, our supporters, and celebrate Nashville’s tree canopy. RSVP by October 9th. Get details and buy tickets on our events page.
Help us preserve Nashville’s Canopy by making a donation! Your generous gift will fund new trees and protect existing canopy that would take decades to replace.
$25 can water a new tree.
$100 can fund consulting with a neighborhood group on saving mature trees during nearby development.
$250 can fund a new tree and professional planting.
$1,000 can care for 10 mature trees in summer.
$1,800 can fund a year of work toward a new tree bill (protect Nashville's canopy for $150/month!).
Donate a tree for us to plant in an open spot in Nashville, or buy one for your own yard through our annual tree sale, open from September to February!
If you’re interested in becoming a sponsor for our next tree care day in April, 2027, reach out to us!
Sign up for our email newsletter and check out our Linktree for more ways to connect!