When cash-strapped local governments seek more resources for their parks, they often look to the private sector. While park systems draw revenues from several private sources, including user fees and business concessions, this discussion focuses on voluntary contributions----gifts from individual donors, corporate sponsors, and foundation grants.

The search for private contributors inevitably becomes a quest for partnerships with private organizations. You can't just pick their pockets--you have to find ways to work together. What follows are some suggestions, aimed particularly at public officials and agency staff, for how to find private funding partners and what to expect from the partnerships.

1. To seek private funding, find a nonprofit partner who can raise money.
Private donors are reluctant to give straight to the government; in fact, their rules often preclude it. They want to be sure their dollars will go straight into the project they choose to support, not a general fund, and they don't want their dollars to displace public spending. Furthermore, private, not-for-profit organizations develop a set of skills, attitudes and relationships that are conducive to attracting private dollars. Typically, they will be better than a government agency at tapping private resources.

Who are these nonprofit organizations? Chances are, you have some in your town, city, or region right now. They may be big or small, your agency's buddy or its severest critic. Some are citywide park advocacy or booster groups, others are devoted to an individual park or greenway or sport, and some are allied with a civic or community development organization.

Some of the most successful groups have been created at the instigation of a farsighted mayor or parks director. In Louisville, Kentucky, for example, when a grassroots lobbying effort called attention to the deteriorating conditions in the city's Olmsted-designed parks in the 1980's, then-Mayor Jerry Abramson responded by supporting the creation of the nonprofit Louisville Olmsted Park Conservancy. Its first charge was to develop a master plan and raise money for capital renovation projects. The Conservancy has proved highly effective in providing a vision for how the park system should be improved and in drawing community support --financial, volunteer, and vocal support-- to that vision.

Many park groups are evolving. Some that were created at the behest of city government find they must develop greater independence to be fully effective. Others, which may have originated as watchdogs barking at the heels of government, have found ways to work closely with city agencies. In this burgeoning new field, successful organizations are inspiring new groups to form and are testing new forms of partnership.

2. Private partners do more than raise money.
Even when these organizations are created as a simple conduit for dollars, they take on a life of their own. That is the case because, first of all, if they are going to attract substantial private dollars, they must have a compelling mission. The Central Park Conservancy in New York City, for example, did not succeed simply because it was good at rounding up wealthy donors. It succeeded because its founder, Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, brought a persuasive, persistent vision to revitalizing Central Park, which attracted donors. Secondly, funders demand it. They want to be sure that their investments will not go to waste, so they insist that the nonprofit develop ways to assure that. Susan Rademacher, director of the Louisville Olmsted Park Conservancy, commented, for example: "One of the things that we've had to do to assure the private investors and funders that this is an investment well worth making is to really attend, after the projects are finished, to the longer term maintenance issues. We have established a maintenance endowment. We have an annual review by an outside independent panel, [… which] then kicks out work orders …so that problems don't begin to mount up. " Third, the groups often discover that they are good at more things than raising money, and they move to address areas of unmet need. These include such things as initiating innovative programs, managing capital projects (because they have advantages over government in speed and quality control), developing master plans, and building community involvement.

These factors add up to a private partner that brings much more than dollars to its relationship with the public sector. They also mean that the best of these organizations places demands on the public agency for better performance. As Susan Rademacher said in describing the origins of the Louisville organization, "the Conservancy raised [the] funds, but on the condition that the parks department itself be renewed. We recognized …that if we were going to be in a strong partnership, there had to be the infrastructure within the parks department to take ownership of this new way of thinking about parks, and to step up to the plate with more intelligent and more effective maintenance and operating standards. " Oftentimes, partner organizations also spur greater demand by the public for public sector spending on parks. San Francisco, New York, Baltimore, and Atlanta are among the big cities that have recently witnessed strong drives to increase public funding for parks, led by groups that are active in raising private funds.

Public sector leaders play a critical role in shaping this emerging field by the ways that they engage in partnerships and the ways they encourage the formation, spread and evolution of groups. In Cleveland, for example, former Mayor Michael White encouraged the metamorphosis of CleanLand, Ohio, a nonprofit organization which had successfully beautified railroad and street rights-of-way, into ParkWorks. Now a nationally recognized leader in the urban parks field, ParkWorks is currently transforming some 80 barren schoolyards into neighborhood parks. New York City's Department of Parks and Recreation, through the public/private hybrid Partnership for Parks, has helped nonprofit friends-of-park groups to grow and to work together in common cause.

3. Private funders vary in what they support.
Donors fall into three categories: individuals, private foundations, and corporate donors. Private foundations are what first come to mind when most of us think of funders. Most of the foundations that give to urban parks and recreation today are local or regional in their orientation; few are national. Their purpose may be to sustain and strengthen the civic fabric of the community, improve its health and environment, safeguard the future of its children, or enrich its cultural life. A creative park organization looks for the ways in which its mission matches any of these aims. (A wise one also avoids any funding that will pull it off-mission.) Foundations typically want to support innovations that will be sustained if successful. They want to invest in lasting changes. Since they do not have the means to sustain improvements over the long term themselves, they tend to support catalytic agents that may bring about long-lasting changes, and they look for signs of a system-wide, public commitment to maintaining improvements or other ways of protecting the investments they make, such as those Susan Rademacher cited.

Individual donors are a significant component of the private sector support for parks. With individual donors, personal ties take on great importance--ties to the place, to the people who are asking, or to the purpose of the donation. Forest Park Forever, for example, recognized this when they asked St. Louis residents for their memories of Forest Park, reminding them of the bonds they feel to this century-old park. It has raised $47 million in private contributions, from million-dollar gifts to pennies collected by school children, matching $45 million in public capital funds.

Individual support comes in the form of dollars--sometimes in very substantial amounts--and through acts of stewardship. Nonprofit park groups, and some public agencies as well, have grown adept at corralling volunteer labor for special events and clean-up days. But voluntary stewards of the parks are active far beyond the limits of one-day events--leading tours or little leagues, clearing invasive plants, acting as informal playground guardians, organizing fundraising events. Nonprofits play an invaluable role in activating and organizing such individuals.

Contributions from individuals offer consistent support, so long as the ties are maintained, because many give year after year, unlike most foundations.

Corporate donors are generally market-oriented in their choice of contributions. At the simplest level, that means they fund where their markets are, and they seek to build good will as well as support good work. Corporate donors often want to sponsor winners--for example, a popular concert series in a park, a renovated ballfield (such as those supported by the National Football League), or outstanding environmental education programs (such as those supported by Texaco). Adept fundraisers turn to corporations to sustain successful innovations. To draw new audiences into the upper end of Central Park, for example, the Central Park Conservancy experimented with new programs using grant funds from a non-corporate foundation, the Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds. Then, having developed a successful format, it was able to attract corporate sponsors for continued support of the programs.

Some corporate donors support projects that strengthen their ties with their own employees. This sometimes includes service projects that provide substantial in-kind assistance. Carroll Park, for instance, in Philadelphia, was the beneficiary of a one-day landscaping makeover provided by a landscaping firm which donated materials and employee time worth thousands of dollars through the Philadelphia Green program of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.

Supporting a park may also simply make good business sense by protecting and enhancing a business's investment in a particular locale. Hence, local merchants, utilities, and hospitals sometimes become strong supporters because a successful park anchors the neighborhood.

Although the discussion above draws distinctions between foundations, individuals, and corporate donors, in practice the three categories overlap considerably. Many individuals give through private foundations, particularly family foundations. Big businesses generally give through a corporate foundation, which may operate much like any other private foundation. Some fundraising strategies apply to all of them:

• Donors look for both need and the potential for success. It's easy to demonstrate need in the park realm, but neediness is not enough. There must be signs that a donor's investment will contribute to lasting success.
• Donors look for signs of leadership, commitment, and future continuity. Those are the markers that indicate a good chance of continued success. And this is where the public sector is critical, even if a private organization raises and spends the funds. Donors want evidence that their money will go to improvements and activities that the community values and will support and maintain. Committed leadership on both the public and private side is valued.
• Private donations cannot replace public commitment. No one wants to pay for what they believe taxes should cover. More importantly, no one wants to send money down a hole. So if the public systems for supporting and maintaining parks are irreparably broken, it will be impossible to raise substantial private dollars in lieu of public funds unless there is a plausible strategy for changing the system.
• When raising funds, combine capital, program, and maintenance needs in an overall plan. Though public sector budgets rigidly separate capital from operating costs, Tupper Thomas, the skillful administrator of Prospect Park in Brooklyn, advises merging these components--which should be complementary, in any case--and then tailoring specific funding proposals to the interests of each prospective donor.

Finding the proper balance
While some local governments have yet to tap private resources for their parks, others are debating how much is too much. When private funding outstrips public, questions of who really controls the park can easily arise. Recent studies of the revenue streams for city parks show a broad spread in the proportion that comes from private sources (including user fees), even without accounting for private donations that do not pass through the city budget . Although contributions to Prospect Park have risen to the level that private funding equals public funds, Tupper Thomas nevertheless recommends a 60/40 ratio of public to private dollars, to ensure that the public nature of the park is preserved.

Ironically, private partners can increase the sense of public ownership of parks, by involving community members and drawing more users into the park. A neighborhood park in Cleveland, for example, was reclaimed from drug dealers through the efforts of private nonprofit groups, and is sustained as a community-wide asset by residents' involvement and diligence. It is a story common to many cities.

Strategies to replace public funding with private contributions are unlikely to succeed because donors don't want to spend their money that way. They don't want their funds used instead of tax dollars, and they don't want to invest in a losing cause. On the other hand, public/private partnerships might very well succeed in increasing both private and public investment in parks.

For More Information

American Planning Association's City Parks Forum, at www.planning.org/cpf, offers a good annotated bibliography, available as a pdf file.

Garvin, Alexander; Gayle Berens; et al. Urban Parks and Open Space, Washington, DC: Urban Land Institute, 1997, 217 pages. Fifteen case studies include information on sources and innovative approaches to funding.

Peter Harnik, Inside City Parks, Washington, DC: Urban Land Institute, 2000, 214 pages.

Peter Harnik, Paying for Urban Parks without Raising Taxes, Trust for Public Land, 1998, provides a thoughtful discussion of fees, outsourcing, and commercial sponsorships. Available at http://www.tpl.org/tier2_rp2.cfm?folder_id=826.

Project for Public Spaces, Public Parks, Private Partners, New York, NY, 2000, 118 pages. Discusses how nonprofit park organizations originate and operate, with many examples.

Project for Public Spaces, Urban Parks Online, at http://urbanparks.pps.org, has a number of articles on funding and on partnerships.

Notes

1. Audio Conference, "Urban Parks and Green Space," APA and Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, May 25, 2000.
2. Ibid.
3. Peter Harnik, Inside City Parks, Urban Land Institute, 2000, provides budget breakdowns for the park systems of the 25 largest cities in the U.S. Pat Coughlin of the City of Dayton Department of Parks, Recreation and Culture has gathered park budget data about a number of smaller cities in North America, available at www.geocities.com/bigpatc.

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Author and Copyright Information

Copyright 2002 by author

Linda R. Cox, FAICP, is a consultant who works with nonprofit organizations on planning, community development, and program initiatives. From 1998 to 2001 she was a program officer for the Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds, which invested $29 million in urban parks programs throughout the U.S. She can be contacted at lcbronx@aol.com.