A Charity Leader Works to Beautify an Inner City

A DAY IN THE LIFE

By Kimberlee Roth

Rebecca Salminen Witt, president of the Greening of Detroit, is starting her day a couple of hours earlier than expected. At 7 a.m. on a Friday in June, she arrives at a vacant lot in downtown Detroit to supervise its refurbishing, even though volunteers aren’t slated to arrive until 9. Yesterday, a tire blew out on the small earthmover one of her employees was using to prepare the parcel for today’s work, part of the organization’s effort to improve the quality of life in Detroit by promoting planting projects and environmental education. The vehicle wasn’t fixed in time to finish the job yesterday, so Ms. Salminen Witt and her organization’s urban forester, Joe Sulak, who plans and supervises the actual planting, agreed to meet here this morning to complete the job before their volunteers show up. She helps finish grading the lot while Mr. Sulak drives the earthmover.

When the volunteers arrive, Ms. Salminen Witt greets them and tells them about this particular project. By the end of the day tomorrow, the lot will have been transformed from “a dumpy eyesore,” in the words of one volunteer, surrounded by a chain-link fence and filled with dead trees, weeds, and litter, to a welcoming green square with thriving trees, flower gardens, and a walking path. Over the course of the summer, once Ms. Salminen Witt sees where the shade will fall, the Greening will add benches and perhaps some chess tables. Its three partners on the project — a nearby business, a church, and the Detroit Transportation Corporation, which owns the city’s light rail system and the lot — have plans for nighttime lighting and an irrigation system too.

The Greening plants throughout the spring and fall. In May and June, the Greening is busy with its spring plantings, typically completing two to three similar to this one but not quite as extensive each weekend, and at least one every weekday. Since its founding in 1989, the organization has planted more than 35,000 trees around Detroit, improved 1,000 city blocks, and reclaimed 100 vacant lots.

‘Creating an Avocation’

Ms. Salminen Witt was named the Greening’s leader in 1996 after practicing law for several years. Eighteen-hour days and unrewarding work drove her to the classifieds, she says. The influence of her family background, she says, steered her toward the Greening’s ad; her father served as a conservation officer with the state’s Department of Natural Resources, and her mother was a community educator. Ms. Salminen Witt didn’t know much about the organization at the time, she recalls, but was intrigued by the opportunity.

“I was really excited about the possibility of taking things I knew and had grown up with and that were near to my heart and creating an avocation, not just a vocation,” she says.

The trustees who interviewed her were enthusiastic about her qualifications, but concerned that the lower pay in the nonprofit world would deter her from making a commitment.

“How do we know you’re not going to leave in a year?” she recalls the board members asking. “I’m basically making a $50,000 donation to the organization the day I start working here,” she replied. “If I’m willing to do that right off the bat, I’m not taking this lightly.”

She wasn’t. When she took the position, the Greening had two other full-time employees — a forester and an administrative assistant — and an annual budget of about $220,000, which supported three programs. Today Ms. Salminen Witt is one of nine full-time employees (she adds 30 part-timers in summer to help maintain the trees the group plants), and an annual budget of nearly $2-million supports 31 programs.

On this day in June, she heads back to the office about 10 a.m. to write a few checks: one so that her office manager can buy postage for the group’s outgoing mail, one to pay for recently delivered tree stock, and the third for a marimba, a musical instrument — this one built to weather the elements — that will complete a forest and playground at a school for mentally and physically disabled students.

She sighs as she opens the safe in her office. Ever since an employee wrote checks to herself and signed Ms. Salminen Witt’s name a few years ago, the group’s checkbook has been kept in the safe, and only the group’s leader has the combination. Besides the administrative burden of writing checks and overseeing petty cash, she still feels the sting of the betrayal.

“We’re such a small, close staff — everyone does everything around here — so it was really upsetting,” she says. “I didn’t hire anyone to replace her for a few months, until my staff finally came to me and said, ‘You know, you really need to get over this. We need help.’”

Budget Woes

As she fills out the last check, she is reminded of her group’s current financial status.

“Lately, there hasn’t been a whole lot of extra money in the budget,” she says. “Fund raising has been incredibly difficult the last couple of years.”

Corporate and foundation grants, which represent 65 percent of the Greening’s budget, have taken the biggest hit. (The rest of the group’s revenue comes from private donations, and 3 percent to 5 percent from the federal government.) The losses have led to some serious thinking, she says: “Do I lay people off? Do I end programs? So far, I haven’t had to do either, but we’ve been close.”

Money recently ran out for TreeKeepers Kids, a five-year-old program the charity runs in schools. The program, which teaches children about the urban ecosystem and how to care for it, costs the Greening about $110,000 per year. “It’s difficult to find partners that want to fund ongoing programs,” she says. “People like to do new things.”

So the organization has been encouraging the two dozen schools that participate in the program to assume more responsibility for securing supplies and funds. The Greening has also managed to capitalize on publicity about the program: In response to a recent local newspaper article about it, the group received $2,500 from a company called Entertainment Publications to support the program at an additional school, and another environmental group, the Michigan Wildflower Association, passed along information about potential grants.

At budgeting meetings in the fall, Ms. Salminen Witt knows she will have to explain to her board that if she can’t pay for a particular program, it will have to be cut.

“The hard part is being so invested,” she says. “I think business people can say, ‘Oh, it’s just business,’ but I feel like I’m losing an arm.”

The Greening has never run a capital or endowment campaign, but a board needs to be ready to start a project of that magnitude, according to Ms. Salminen Witt. She and the Greening’s trustees are working toward that goal. In the past year, they have revamped their recruitment process in order to build a diverse, resourceful board with expertise in specific areas: fund raising, forestry, environmental education, and urban development. And they’re talking about fund-raising training to help members get comfortable approaching prospective donors.

Working With Volunteers

Back at the vacant lot after lunch, the volunteers finish collecting trash and spreading the most recent delivery of soil. There’s not much left to do until the trees arrive in an hour or so, and this begins to concern Ms. Salminen Witt. Too much work, and volunteers tend to feel taken advantage of; too little, and they feel underutilized. However, today’s crew members seem content to call their offices or chat with each other during the downtime. No one leaves early or waits out the afternoon in a local tavern, which Ms. Salminen Witt says has happened once or twice.

The volunteers are workers from Ford Motor Company and Visteon, an automotive supplier. Both companies expect — and pay — their employees to volunteer several days each year. The Greening relies heavily on volunteer groups from area corporations as well as neighborhood associations, schools, and civic groups for its plantings. Based on past experience, Ms. Salminen Witt and her staff members now schedule projects around volunteer commitments rather than the other way around.

“People don’t usually care where they work, so it’s better to schedule a huge planting on a day when we know we have a group,” she explains.

She recalls a day in December 2000 when 160 trees were ready to plant in a park but no helpers were scheduled. The week before the planting day, she and her staff members used every available e-mail account, land line, and cell phone to recruit about 100 people from among the Greening’s database of almost 1,500 volunteers.

Today, she spends much of her time talking with the volunteers and passers-by, including an employee from the Wayne County health department concerned about drainage (it had already been taken care of), workers in nearby buildings, and a homeless man she recognizes from her prior trips to the lot. All are heartily enthusiastic about the transformation. During one conversation, Ms. Salminen Witt looks at the walking path and notices that it could use some more gravel. She calls the Greening’s office manager and asks her to arrange a last-minute delivery.

A little after 3 p.m., the trees arrive and everyone gathers to help get them into the ground. It is important to Ms. Salminen Witt that volunteers have a hand in the actual planting. “I want them to have the experience of planting a living thing,” she says. “Many have never planted a tree before volunteering for us.”

She also wants them to feel a sense of accomplishment, and it appears that many do: She has seen former volunteers walk around the city pointing to “their” trees — meaning, the ones they helped plant and, depending on the project, may still help maintain.

Once the trees are in, about 3:45 p.m., the volunteers get their cameras out and take group photos, demanding that Ms. Salminen Witt join them. Several compliment her on how well-organized the day was, and thank her as they leave. A Green Corps team — the Greening’s summer youth employees — will come by shortly to gather the rakes, shovels, wheelbarrows, and empty water bottles. Ms. Salminen Witt heads back to the office about 4:30 p.m. to check messages and clear her desk before going home. She will be back at the lot first thing tomorrow — a Saturday — to meet another crew of volunteers who will complete the planting.

Facing Challenges

Ms. Salminen Witt’s duties aren’t usually this “hands-on,” she says, but she has taken over some responsibilities from her project manager, Katie Armstrong. Ms. Armstrong is devoting her time these days to state and federal committees dealing with the emerald ash borer crisis.

The beetle infestation has killed millions of ash trees in southeastern Michigan in the past year, and the Greening has already spent almost $75,000 in staff time working to contain it — the group is spearheading an education effort in the region where the beetles have done the most damage, and drafting a reforestation plan for Detroit.

The losses the city will face are “staggering,” Ms. Salminen Witt says. Detroit officials have asked her organization to lead the restoration effort, but have told her that the city is unable to offer assistance. With the organization’s current capacity to plant 4,000 trees per year, she estimates it will take 10 to 15 years and at least $150,000 annually in staff and overhead costs. In addition, new trees alone will cost a minimum of $2.5-million during that 10- to 15-year period. “We’ll be raising private dollars to support that work,” she says. “The question remains as to how quickly we’ll be able to raise them.”

That’s not the only challenge facing the Greening. It also must persuade people who live and work in a troubled city to care about planting trees. It takes a lot of education, says Ms. Salminen Witt. “People we talk to know trees and green space are important, but with all the huge issues facing Detroit, they say they have a hard time making it a priority,” she says. “And I understand that.”

So when the issue comes up, she asks people to close their eyes and picture their favorite city. Once they have, she asks, “Do you see a patch of green or a tree?” The answer is almost always yes. “We want commerce here, we want a thriving downtown, we want people to come and live here. But you need trees to make that all happen,” she tells them. “And when I put it that way, folks understand.”