Tending the Garden: Why Matlyn Conservation Services Exists — and Why We Need You
Where This Comes From
I’ve spent a lot of hours walking Michigan’s nature preserves with a camera, long before there was anything called Matlyn Conservation Services. Somewhere in those years, a conviction settled in that is rooted in how I read the opening pages of Genesis.
God made the world in six days, and at the end of it, Scripture says it wasn’t just good — it was very good (Genesis 1:31). On the seventh day, He rested. But I’ve come to believe that rest isn’t the same thing as “finished.” The very next thing we read is that God placed the man in the garden “to tend it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15) — not to leave it alone, but to be a steward of it, to continue caring for and building on what had been made.
The way I read it, humanity wasn’t handed a finished painting to hang on the wall. We were handed a garden, and a job.
That’s the way I’ve come to understand stewardship: not as a modern environmental slogan, but as an old assignment. Tending the land, watching over it, noticing when something is wrong and doing something about it. Matlyn Conservation Services, in a very direct sense, grew out of that conviction.
In a nutshell, we created a non-profit service company to help conservation groups meet audit standards and requirements of their various properties under management. Without this additional support, these properties could fall out of compliance or into disrepair and the organizations could lose their conservation standing with the state. You can learn more by exploring our website.
Why We Are Asking You, Specifically
A nonprofit that only one or two people fund is really just a personal project with letterhead. A nonprofit that a community of people believe in is something else entirely — it has supporters, not just a founder. That distinction matters to me, and it matters to the land trusts and preserve managers I’m hoping to serve for years to come.
So here’s the ask: If this mission also means something to you, a gift of any size helps — $10 can help as much as $100. What we need most right now isn’t about the size of the gift, it’s finding a growing number of people willing to put something behind this.
Building a Track Record, One Visit at a Time
Alongside growing our base of support, we’re working on something just as important: actually doing the work, visit after visit. Over the coming months, our goal is to complete a solid run of monitoring visits for land trusts and preserve managers across West Michigan — real properties, real reports, real relationships with the organizations doing the stewardship work on the ground.
That track record matters for its own sake — it’s the actual mission. But it also matters because Matlyn Conservation Services is still a young organization, a newly formed Michigan nonprofit corporation with our application for federal 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status pending. A growing circle of supporters and a visible history of completed work are exactly the kind of evidence that shows this is a real, functioning part of the conservation community — not just an idea on a website.
Put simply: your support and our boots-on-the-ground visits are the same project, seen from two different angles.
What We Are Asking
Two things, if you’re willing. First, consider a gift — of any size. Second, if this isn’t the moment for that, simply pass this page along to someone you may know who may also care about Michigan’s nature preserves, or about a pretty old idea: that tending creation is part of what we were put here to do.
With gratitude,
Matt & Lynn Geelhoed