Volunteer monitoring can be a tremendous asset to water quality protection efforts*. While volunteers contribute their monitoring effort for ‘free’, these cost-effective monitoring programs require a great deal of effort and usually some expense to operate. In addition, for a program to work well a significant amount of planning, implementat ion and ongoing management must occur. Fortunately there are a variety of resources available to assist in developing new programs or expanding existing programs.

The National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Volunteer Water Quality Monitoring National Water Resources Project is developing this "Guide for Growing Extension Volunteer Monitoring Programs" to direct you to some of those resources and help you start asking questions that you’ll need to answer in order to create an effective program that meets the needs of your community.

The Guide for Growing Extension Volunteer Monitoring Programs has been designed in a modular form, with a series of ‘chapters’ or modules that can be used alone or in conjunction with other sections depending upon the needs of your program. The purpose of this guide is bring together some of the excellent resources produced by a wide variety of monitoring programs or agencies into a comprehensive document to help support Extension-affiliated volunteer monitoring efforts. Thus you will find frequent references and links to a wide variety of materials from Cooperative Extension and other programs.

The modular structure was selected not only to facilitate the use of selected materials, but to also allow for easy updates. We are anxious to receive feedback, suggestions and especially leads on additional material or topics that should be included in this guide.
Our goal is to highlight the excellent work of our volunteer monitoring colleagues, both those within and outside of the Extension to help develop a strong national support system for volunteer monitoring within Extension.

Follow links below or to the left to access chapters of the Guide:

Getting Started (803K pdf file)

Why Monitoring Makes Sense (582 K pdf file)

Designing Your Monitoring Strategy (1.6M pdf file)

Monitoring Matrix (80 K pdf file)

Effective Training (986 K pdf file)

Monitoring Equpment Suppliers (437 K pdf file)

Direct Links to Monitoring Programs' Manuals (online)

Building Credibility: Quality Assurance and Quality Control for Volunteer Monitoring Programs (1.5 M pdf file)

Sharing Information Through Internet Exchanges (1 M pdf file)

Volunteer Management (7 M pdf file)

Planning Your Programs Data Management System (6 M pdf file)

Tips and Tools for Effective Presentations (526 K pdf file)

Outreach Tools (459 K pdf file)

Locating Support and Funding (572 K pdf file)

*The impact of volunteer water quality monitoring was assessed in two USDA NIFA-funded projects. The first project, Assessing the Scope of Cooperative Extension Volunteer Water Quality Monitoring Programs, took place during 1995-96 and encompassed written and/or oral interviews with CE State Water Quality Coordinators and individual CE-sponsored program coordinators. The second project, National Facilitation of Extension Volunteer Monitoring Efforts included written inquiries and follow-up email correspondence during 2001-02 to CE State Water Quality Coordinators and individual CE-sponsored program coordinators.