Even before the cuts, Pearsall had been thinking about restructuring the program to give the volunteers more responsibility. Now, with the program's survival at stake, restructuring suddenly went from being simply a good idea to being an immediate necessity. In March 1993 DEP sent out a detailed survey asking volunteers what additional tasks they'd be interested in doing. From the responses it was clear that the volunteers were ready and willing to take on everything from fundraising and strategic planning to training new volunteers to entering data into a database. DEP and COLA moved quickly to revamp the program structure.
Regional Coordinators are the first line of contact for volunteers within their regions.
Volunteer monitors give their data sheets to their Regional Coordinators, who check them for completion and then hand them over to Data Entry Coordinators. Data Entry Coordinators enter the data using software provided by DEP, then send the data via diskette to DEP, where it is used to generate an annual report. The new Coordinators were trained in the summer of 1993. In 1994, the first full year under the new structure, the annual report was produced in record time, thanks to the work of the Data Entry Coordinators. Early in the restructuring process, a Strategic Planning Committee was formed, with representatives from DEP and COLA, and active lake monitors.