Almost every alliance has members who cannot participate in war and end up losing out in war chest and I had an idea about a new war feature that would allow the players not attacking to defend the players fighting in war from waves of monster attacks that would damage their own players if left alone. Added bonus could be the better defence provided ie more waves of monsters killed would give those players added bonuses like revive a fallen hero on the battle field and healing or possibly minor stat boosts for when that player is attacked again. But something that is fun for lower levels and everyone can be part of war experience and can make wars a bit more exiting for both sides. Open to suggestions but I think this would make a huge improvement make alliances work together instead of half get to play and the other are told not to participate.
The war chest progress is for the alliance, not for the individual members.
Even if they opt out of war the chest still progresses each war. Their participation % just goes down a bit per each war they don’t put their defense team in.
If your alliance is telling members not to participate because they’re too weak, you may need a different alliance. Or they may. The only time a player should be told to opt out is if they are not able or willing to use all their flags.
With our lower level players, they’re designated to finish off wounded teams. The stronger players are expected to hit the strongest teams. If they get the kill, great. If not, they move on to the next target and leave the wounded teams for the weaker players rather than waste a 3800+ flag on a lone hero
I completely agree with what @NPNKY is saying. We have a player with a much lower team than the rest of our alliance and she does yeoman work cleaning up after us.
She’s the spouse of one of our long-term players and just recently started playing the game. She offered to sit out the wars until she was stronger and I was adamant that she join us the moment she qualified.
Since then, she’s been the player we’ve messaged the most often to see if she’s available to do clean up for us. Shes also gained valuable knowledge of the wars and has bonded with the other players.
We would NEVER ask a player to not participate in the wars. Our players are asked to opt out if they won’t be able to use all their flags and told that if they CHOOSE to fight a war - to use all their flags.
I will pile on @princess1 and @NPNKY.
The first Alliance I joined told me that I could not participate in wars because I was new and my teams weren’t good enough.
I left that alliance quickly and found a better home at Helios. Even with a 4K defense, my overall roster is WAY weaker than our senior members. So I do clean up. Which is actually a lot of fun. It’s not glorious, but it matters and saves the heavies from wasting flags on 1,2,3, or 4 hero teams.
If you can use all your flags, you can and should participate in wars.
And in our current war, thanks to the points left for clean up, the player I was referring to at one point had more points than her husband … need I spell out how thrilled she was with that? 
Why is it they cannot participate? I would think the only reason for that is that they are not at the required level (12 was it?). It does not take long to get to that level in the game, and then they can, as mentioned, start doing cleanup work.
I keep encouraging all the members of my alliance to use all their flags even if they only get a few points out of it. I’ve had times where I got zero out of a match because of bad boards (with my strongest team too).
Exactly my point. Low levels without 6 teams are asked not to fight in wars and I’ve just suggested something new to add to alliance wars so people with only one or two teams can enjoy.
If you are in an alliance that forbids lower level players from participating, find a new alliance
The game doesn’t force them to opt out though, as long as they’re the required level. That is an alliance specific requirement, and not all alliances do that.
The game interprets opting out as in you’re not going to participate. No defending, no attacking. That makes sense to me. 
If you’re too busy to be able to use all attacks, then opt out is there and it works for what it is designed for.
I don’t see why anyone who’s opted out should get to participate in any form or way. Such a feature would be easily abused by other players who just want to do minimal work to get loot, and it would also punish players who really are too busy to participate in the war for not doing the monster horde stuff. You could make an argument for making a separate box for this feature. A box for “Defend” and a box for “attack” beside the box that has the participate option. But that already sounds really confusing and convoluted to me.
If you want low level players to be part of war, then let them be part of war! 
Just tell them to color stack 2* heroes against weakened teams, and play the cleanup job.
I’m not sure what the issue is, but if they don’t have 30 heroes they can still provide value and learn a lot.
And there are some cleanups that can be handled by 2* heroes, no joke.
The alliance needs a facelift.