Seed Collection Training
Please note: Volunteer recruitment and seed collection activities through Project Wingspan have come to a conclusion in Minnesota, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan. While anyone is welcome to view and learn from these resources, at this time our active volunteer recruitment and seed collection states are limited to Illinois and Indiana.
Here for our online training?
Become a Certified Volunteer to collect native wildflower seeds with Project Wingspan!
Project Wingspan empowers volunteers to collect native wildflower seeds throughout Indiana and Illinois. With a goal of enhancing 2,000 acres or more of pollinator habitat by 2024, Project Wingspan needs YOU! This is a great way to learn about the native wildflower species you’ll find in your local pollinator habitat and will help to improve your native plant identification skills. Learn everything about this volunteer program and complete the full training and certification process to become a Project Wingspan volunteer.
1.) Fill out our pre-assessment quiz.
This will help us understand your background with seed collection and allow us to see how effective our online training has been. This is not required, but we would appreciate it if you filled out both the pre-assessment and post-assessment forms during this training.
Pre-Assessment Quiz2.) Watch our webinars
If you are a volunteer wishing to join an established Collection Team, watch our webinar section focusing on what Volunteer Collectors need to know (found below). This will provide you with background information about Project Wingspan, give you an overview of our collection protocol, and introduce you to our target species.
If you are a volunteer Team Lead or Data Collector, please watch the webinar section focusing on what Team Leads and Data Collectors need to know (found below). This section will provide you with: background information about Project Wingspan; a review of how to assess, scout, and collect seed from a site; data collection information; a Survey 123 for ArcGIS tutorial; and an introduction series for our target species.
Please note: Project Wingspan requires the involvement of people at 3 different levels of responsibility: State Coordinator, Team Lead, and Volunteer Seed Collector. Each of these roles serves a different function and these training resources are targeted at both our Team Leads and our Seed Collection Volunteers. Review the chart below to understand which parts of the training will be most relevant to you.
3.) Download and Review
Download and review the Project Wingspan Seed Collection Manual and Plant Profiles. These documents will give you details on the protocol and the forms needed to participate in this project, the contact information for your State Coordinator and other project partners, and the detailed plant identification information to help you learn to ID our target plants in the field.
Please note: The seed collection webinars give an overview of the protocol, but it is important that anyone collecting seed for this project read and become familiar with the Seed Collection Manual and its appendices. One of the many strengths of this program is the consistent training across all states in order to meet our goal of completing successful and responsible seed collections. To achieve this goal it is crucial that each participant read the Seed Collection Manual. We also would like to note that five additional plant profiles are currently in production. We will send an update email to volunteers once those resources have been added, to ensure that you have the most recent copy of this document.
4.) Fill out our post-assessment quiz
This will help us to understand how effective the training was. This is not required, but we would appreciate it if you filled out both the pre-assessment and post-assessment forms during this training.
Post-Assessment Quiz5.) Turn in your Volunteer Waiver form
Please download the form below, complete it and email it to ko@pollinator.org.
Volunteer Form6.) Fill out the contact form and become certified!
Please fill out the following form so that we can send your personalized certificate of completion for the online training and pass your information on to your State Coordinator for assignment to a Collection Team.
This step is crucial both to let us know you have completed the training module and to determine where you are located. If you do not fill out the contact form, we won’t know which Collection Team is closest to where you live.
Training Webinars
If you are viewing this page in order to complete your online training and become a certified Project Wingspan volunteer, please watch the following videos to complete Step 2 of the training module.
If you are a volunteer wishing to join an established Collection Team, watch our webinar series focusing on what Volunteer Collectors need to know (found below). This will provide you with background information about Project Wingspan, give you an overview of our collection protocol, and introduce you to our target species.
Watch project introduction webinar:
Watch project protocol overview webinar:
Watch introduction series for the target species:
If you are a volunteer Team Lead or Data Collector, please watch the webinar series focusing on what Team Leads and Data Collectors need to know (found below). This section will provide you with: background information about Project Wingspan; a review of how to assess, scout, and collect seed from a site; data collection information; a Survey 123 for ArcGIS tutorial; and an introduction series for our target species.
Watch project introduction webinar:
Watch project full protocol webinar:
Watch introduction series for the target species:
Survey 123 data collection tutorial video for data collectors:
Do you need to update your Survey 123 application or make sure you have the current Seed Collection Survey? If so, watch this tutorial from CAST.
If you need help troubleshooting the process you can email Brian Culpepper or click the title in the upper left-hand corner of the video and submit your comment on the video’s YouTube page
Download Center
Whether you have already attended our in-person training or are looking into our online training option, this is the place to download the resources you’ll need, to learn about collecting seed for monarchs, the rusty patched bumble bee, and our other imperiled pollinators.
Project Wingspan Seed Collection ManualPlant Profiles for Target Species
Our In-Person Training Power Point Slides
Target Species List Bloom Chart
Illustrated Plant Structure Guide
This guide has been provided by UF/IFAS Center for Aquatic and Invasive Plants - http://plants.ifas.ufl.edu/education/ and it illustrates many of the botanical terms used in our Plant Profiles.
Don't Forget to Log those volunteer hours!
After each collection event in which you participate, please fill out our volunteer hour tracking form for your state.
Filling out our form helps us show how many volunteer hours have gone into this project and is an important metric when presenting the success of our project to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. This information can also be useful in tracking your time and mileage for a tax write-off so make sure to keep your copy of the responses for your records! Your copy will be emailed to you after the fill out the online form.
IllinoisIndiana
Iowa