Philanthropy and the National Park Service

J. Vaughn, H. Cortner

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137358202
• eBook ISBN: 9781137353894
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

As the National Park Service prepares for its 2016 centennial, this book provides an in-depth analysis of the role of philanthropy and the national parks - exploring the challenges faced when working with non-profit philanthropic partners.

Chapter 1

Philanthropy through Park Partnerships

When President Woodrow Wilson signed the National Park Service Act in 1916, he brought 36 national parks, monuments, and reservations under a single federal agency, the National Park Service (NPS). A number of disparate units that earlier had mostly been cared for by the military would henceforth be managed by the new agency to “conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”¹ What developed over the next century was a complex system of partnerships, internal and external to the Park Service, designed to meet the two prongs of the agency’s dual, and often conflicting, mandate of preservation and visitor enjoyment. As the agency grew from managing the 36 units to today’s 401, so did the array of partnership arrangements. One significant role that many partnerships have assumed is philanthropic, raising money to donate to the agency as a supplement to the appropriations provided by Congress.

Today many NPS units depend on park-specific, philanthropic nonprofit partners, called friends groups, for fundraising, and there are currently about 185 friends to choose from. But not every park has a friends group, and some groups support more than one park. In addition, most national parks are served by one of the approximately 70 cooperating associations, legal entities that are older than friends groups (the first was the Yosemite Association, established in 1923). As partners, cooperating associations have a decidedly educational mission, operating bookstores and publishing interpretative materials, and directing their proceeds to the national parks. Within the overall context and historical background of park philanthropy through park partnerships, this study examines the legal and organizational frameworks within which friends and cooperating associations operate, the diverse roles they play in the operation and maintenance of park units, and the issues and challenges they and the parks encounter. But before delving into the specifics of how philanthropic partnerships between the Park Service and its friends groups and cooperating associations function, which is explained in chapters 3–6, it is first necessary to understand more fully the contours of the partnership concept as well as the historical evolution of park philanthropy in general, which forms the crux of this chapter and chapter 2.

Defining Partners

Thanks Pardner!

Yes, YOU! By paying the entrance fee, you are partnering with the National Park Service through the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act Program at Devils Tower National Monument. Your entry fees are used to support improved signage and building restoration.

Other partners include the Black Hills National Forest, Black Hills Youth Conservation Corps, Black Hills National Forest Tribal Youth Conservation Corps, Montana Conservation Corps, Student Conservation Association, American Conservation Experience, Hulett and Crook County Emergency Response, Bear Lodge Alternative High School, Christian Motorcycle Association, Crook County Sheriff Department, Access Fund, Wyoming Department of Transportation, Boy Scouts of America, Bearlodge Writers, and the many park climbing guides. Thanks for helping us out.²

Thus the Devils Tower National Monument’s official newspaper publication, The Tower Columns, gives an account of the partners it relies upon. Immediately below these acknowledgments is a paragraph highlighting the monument’s cooperating association, the Devils Tower National History Association, and its work, operating the bookstore in the visitor’s center, whose profits help the Wyoming park support the Junior Ranger program, interpretive exhibits, and a cultural program series. A membership form for the partner sits alongside the description.

So what is a partnership? The term is a deceivingly complex one. The US Department of the Interior (DOI), the cabinet department in which the Park Service resides, notes that “almost any time that a federal or non-federal entity is working together with the Department, that working relationship may be considered a partnership.”³ Within the Park Service and among its stakeholders, “partnership” is used loosely and frequently to describe almost any type of associational relationship. The entrance fee–paying park visitor is a partner, as are individuals who drop a small donation in a donation box inside the park, make a sizeable bequest, or volunteer their time to work in the parks. Apart from these people, groups with formal and congressionally authorized status to work cooperatively with the agency (e.g., cooperating associations, National Park Foundation), are partners. Other federal agencies, both within and outside the DOI, particularly those agencies that share resource management responsibilities, including, for example, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) within the DOI and the Forest Service within the Department of Agriculture, are also considered partners.

State and local units of governments can also be counted as partners in a number of ways: through official cooperative management agreements, through agreements to provide services to parks or programs, through programs where the Park Service provides technical assistance (such as the Historic American Buildings Survey program) as well as planning assistance,⁴ or simply through informal consultations and cooperation. Private interest groups organized specifically and solely to advocate nationally on behalf of parks (e.g., the National Parks Conservation Association [NPCA]), or to benefit one or more parks (e.g., friends of the park groups), are partners too, as are national, regional, or locally based private interest groups organized around other issues not related to a national park but who engage in some type of activity benefiting a park. Thus, in addition to such well-known conservation and environmental groups as the Nature Conservancy or the Sierra Club, groups as diverse as the Boy Scouts, the Christian Motorcycle Association, or a local writers’ group may be included as a park partner.

There are a myriad other partnership arrangements involving nonprofit organizations. San Francisco-based NatureBridge, founded as the Yosemite Institute in 1971, offers national park-based overnight field science programs in Yosemite, Olympic, and Channel Islands national parks, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. The organization merged with the Headlands Institute and Olympic Park Institute in 2012, and now serves an estimated 30,000 participants each year. NatureBridge is working with the Park Service to develop a $43 million environmental education center in Yosemite. Another entity, the Udall Foundation, coordinates a Parks in Focus program giving middle school youth from underserved communities an opportunity to use photography to learn about nature in the national parks. Universities and other research and educational institutions may interact through the national network of the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Units that conduct collaborative and interdisciplinary applied projects, or may work more informally on a project-to-project basis. Finally, corporate and business entities (e.g., concessioners, companies that make donations or engage in fundraising campaigns, travel agencies, and chambers of commerce) are also considered partners. The National Parks Promotion Council, for instance, helps establish cooperative partnerships with state tourism offices, gateway communities, destination marketing organizations, and travel companies that provide services related to the national parks.

Thus, one might just as easily ask: just who isn’t a partner? The NPS’s Management Policies 2006 indicates that the “Service will embrace partnership opportunities that will help accomplish the NPS mission provided that personnel and funding requirements do not make it impractical for the Service to participate and the partnership activity would not (1) violate legal or ethical standards, (2) otherwise reflect adversely on the NPS mission and image, or (3) imply or indicate an unwillingness by the Service to perform an inherently governmental function.”⁵ The Park Service may partner, for example, with corporations in campaigns to raise money, but such fundraising campaigns cannot identify the NPS with alcohol or tobacco products.⁶

Partnership Benefits

Management Policies stresses the benefits of partnerships to the agency: “Through these partnerships the Service has received valuable assistance in the form of educational programs, visitor services, living history demonstrations, search-and-rescue operations, fundraising campaigns, habitat restoration, scientific and scholarly research, ecosystem management, and a host of other activities.”⁷ The focus areas for partnerships are just as varied as the forms of partnerships. In addition to the areas included in the Management Policies description noted above, the agency’s partnership website has posted case studies of partnerships in the following areas: arts, capital improvements, community relations, concessioners, cultural resources, design, education/interpretation, facility management, fire management, fundraising, information services, mutual aid, natural resources management/restoration, planning, program delivery, tenant organizations, tourism, trails, transportation, visitor services, and other.⁸ The importance of such partnerships is increasingly stressed by politicians, resource managers, scholars, and interested members of the public, as a necessary and desirable tool for doing business.⁹

Partnerships provide financial support for things a park is prohibited from doing or cannot afford to do with its allotted budget, whether that be updating signage, building new visitor facilities, restoring buildings or habitats, or providing food for volunteers. Partners can bring additional expertise to assist in interpretation, education, and research, and serve as independent ombuds to watch over park priorities and programs. They can be active and powerful constituencies that promote the agency’s mission, argue for its budgets, and broaden the political base of support nationally and with nearby communities. The agency’s partners benefit from an alliance with the Park Service because it advances their agenda, whether it is dedication to the scenic, ecological, cultural, or historical reasons for establishing the park, or organizational development purposes, such as enhancing public image, growing the membership base, or building political power and prestige.

Partnerships are also a mechanism by which lands are added to the national park system. For instance, several partners came together to fund and purchase 623 acres of land near California’s Joshua Tree National Park, where developers planned to build 2,400 homes in 2013. The $1.4 million for the purchase of the large parcel came from the California Wildlife Conservation Board and the nearby Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms as part of the Department of Defense’s Readiness Environmental Protection Initiative. The federal program helped two other partners, The Trust for Public Land and the Mojave Desert Land Trust, to purchase the conservation easement. The easement protects a key aviation corridor in an area known as the Joshua Tree North Linkage that extends about 11 miles from the north end of the national park to the Marine base. The Gateway Parcel is also a migratory corridor for wildlife and includes more than 10,000 Joshua trees. Another partner, a Wells Fargo real estate division, helped the groups with an extended agreement while they completed the fundraising to acquire the land.¹⁰

A similar multi-stakeholder partnership at Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona added the McCauley Ranch parcel to the park, protecting what one partner called “exceptional” and “irreplaceable” prehistoric resources. The efforts of The Conservation Fund and the NPCA added 4,265 acres to the 119,000 acre site, which is also valuable for its underground reserves of potash, a key ingredient in making fertilizers. The potash is estimated to be about 1,000 feet below the surface, and could potentially generate millions of dollars in royalties, although the purchase does not convey mineral rights to the Park Service. What is especially important about the acquisition, however, is that the purchase was already part of the Petrified Forest Expansion Act of 2004, which authorized the Park Service to acquire more than 125,000 acres of state and private lands that form a crazy quilt that crisscrosses the area. But Congress failed to appropriate more money for the acquisition of new land, forcing the NPS to use its own limited resources or rely on philanthropic partners to do so for it. The agency had previously attempted to purchase another ranch on the park’s boundary, but negotiations failed when the NPS could not come up with the $20 million in funding. A Canadian mining company reached an agreement with the ranch owners to buy both the land and the mineral rights attached to it, although park officials hoped the deal might fall through, or that they could someday acquire the surface rights by themselves.¹¹

Without these partnerships, whether for fundraising, friend-raising, political assistance, financial management, or media coverage of a park’s needs, these land acquisitions likely would not have taken place. The partners worked together to forge alliances outside the governmental sphere that all parties agreed would benefit the national parks and the public that enjoys and visits them. The parties recognized that time was of the essence in preserving the land from future development that might destroy or damage valuable artifacts, viewsheds, wildlife and plants, or other natural resources that cannot be replaced or restored. While the partners worked closely with the Park Service in determining the parks’ needs and priorities, they also worked side by side in ways that avoided at least some of the political and bureaucratic barriers that might have stopped the land purchases had they been attempted internally by the agency.

Establishing Partnerships

Some partnerships have a legislative basis. Examples include the 1946 legislative act that statutorily authorized cooperating associations, the National Parks Omnibus Management Act of 1998 that enables the Park Service to enter into cooperative management agreements for federal, state, and local park areas adjacent to a national park unit, and the National Park Service Concessions Management Improvement Act of 1998 that governs commercial visitor services within the parks (e.g., lodging, food, tours, and guide services).

Partnerships in support of parks and recreation areas historically have been encouraged by the federal government, including the 1986 Report and Recommendations to the President of the United States of the President’s Commission on Americans Outdoors. The report highlighted multiple case studies where nonprofit organizations assisted federal agencies, including the Park Service, urging groups to help protect outdoor recreation areas such as the Appalachian Trail.¹² Another venue, the 2004 White House Conference on Cooperative Conservation, gave nonprofit partners an opportunity to identify problems and potential solutions when dealing with federal agencies, and at least one resource agency developed a desk guide on dealing with partners as a result of the meeting.

Other partnerships are founded under the authorities that have been granted the agency to enter into cooperative agreements, memoranda of understanding, and leases and contracts for a variety of general or park-specific purposes. Still others are initiated by local park unit employees and may involve informal nonbinding agreements or may be undertaken simply with a handshake.

There are also several comanaged arrangements, often called “partnership parks.” Legislation in the National Parks Omnibus Management 1998, for example, enables the Park Service to enter into cooperative management agreements with state and local governments for the comanagement of a national park unit with adjacent or nearby state and local park units. The legislation is clear, however, that no transfer of administrative responsibility fo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Chapter 1 Philanthropy through Park Partnerships
• Chapter 2 A History of Support for the National Parks
• Chapter 3 The Legal and Organizational Framework
• Chapter 4 Friends Groups: “You Get By with a Little Help from Your Friends”
• Chapter 5 Cooperating Associations: “The Bookstore People”
• Chapter 6 Issues, Trends, and New Directions
• Appendix: Interview List
• Notes
• Index