Building Incomes, Building Wealth

Verde makes a deep investment in each Nursery Crew Member by:

Paying good wages with benefits. Nursery starting wages are higher than other entry-level landscaping or nursery positions, and benefits begin after the first full month of regular employment.

Employing them year-round. Regular, full-time employees work all year, despite the seasonal nature of the landscaping and nursery industries.

Building Wealth. Nursery Crew Members have the opportunity for revenue-sharing, and will have the chance to become entrepreneurs through Verde support to establish their own sustainable landscaping and/or nursery businesses.

Nursery Crew Members established Quarterly Performance Indicators based on labor hours sold. For FY 2007-08, the Nursery's budget anticipates the Nursery will sell 60% of labor hours available. Nursery Crew Members have set a goal of 75% which, if met, means that the Nursery will earn more money than expected. Crew Members track hours sold on PDAs donated to Verde by FreeGeek.

Crew Members decided how to allocate this potential additional earned income. By consensus, they decided to allocate 50% for Crew Member Bonuses, 30% to a Nursery operating reserve, 10% to fund additional Field Training opportunities, and 10% to fund Donated Services (for example, donating installation services to an unfunded restoration project in the Columbia Slough Watershed). You can see the white board exercise in the photo below.

For Q1, the Verde Native Plant Nursery sold 77.35% of labor hours available (1451 hours sold/1877 hours available), and distributed $4649 in Crew Member bonuses at the close of Q1.