ASSESSING PARK CONSERVANCY VOLUNTEER PROGRAMS: BEST PRACTICES

Charlie McCabe

Since Central Park first opened in New York City, just before the Civil War, Americans living in urban environments have flocked to parks to escape the increasingly crowded conditions of their city and their neighborhood. They have come to parks to enjoy leisure time, entertainment, food and drink and, beginning in the latter half of the 19th Century and increasingly in the 20th century, exercise. Our friends and family congregate and spend hours enjoying everything from gardens to waterways, hiking and biking, and even indoor spaces for visual arts and performances.

Americans’ history of developing and maintaining our public parks has also followed a specific path, much like we do on a bike ride, a run or a walk through a park. We have had periods of tremendous investment in public parks, often spurred by a charismatic individual, followed by heavy usage, along with a struggle to keep the park and its facilities in working order, followed by a period of decline. At times, we use a national crisis, such as the great depression in the 1930s, to spur fresh investment and renewal, followed by a subsequent decline that mirrors challenges to our cities and our regional and national economic well-being.

In the late 1970s, a different way of thinking emerged in the consciousness of many residents of our cities, born of necessity when many cities were facing financial insolvency. The residents organized into groups and began demanding increased investment in park spaces while also forming safety patrols, picking up litter, and painting out graffiti. The reasons were many and varied, including issues of safety, the need for respite from the even more crowded urban world, the desire to “make a difference” (following the first Earth Day in 1970), and knowing that without citizen intervention—challenging and working with our government agencies—conditions would not improve in our once great parks.

The best-known early efforts took place in New York City, with the rise of the Central Park Conservancy and the Prospect Park Alliance, organized around two of the Olmsted and Vaux masterpieces of 19th Century park design—Central Park in Manhattan and Prospect Park in Brooklyn.

These two grassroots organizations were just the first of many to emerge. Beginning in the late 1970s, dozens of “friends of the park” groups quickly grew to hundreds, some becoming even more formalized organizations called park conservancies and most, if not all, operating as non-profit organizations. The progression and sequence of all volunteers to formalized non-profits varied widely from park to park and from city to city, depending on a host of factors, ranging from fundraising capacity to the relationship with city government.

Many lessons were learned and while the park conservancy movement is still small relative to the size and budgets of city parks agencies – in terms of funding and capabilities, conservancies and park friends’ groups are increasing in both numbers and capabilities rapidly. The role and importance of volunteers working in parks alongside park agency staff was and is a key part of the role of park conservancies.

This growth in volunteerism continued over the next several decades, growing and contracting along with good and bad economic times. Park conservancies and friends groups continued to form and grow and tackle more and more projects, helping depleted city parks departments manage parks growing more popular by the day. At the same time, the efficacy of these groups was significantly increased by the rise of volunteerism in parks.

This surge in volunteerism was and still is part of an overall trend, with tremendous growth in volunteering in the United States in the last two decades. Per the Corporation for National and Community Service, about 62.6 million Americans – over 25 percent of the adult population - gave 7.8 billion hours of volunteer service worth $184 billion in 2015. By comparison, the nine parks conservancies interviewed and researched for this paper saw 19,119 volunteers contribute 68,719 hours’ worth $1.75 million in 2016.

While citizen volunteers are well understood as a strategic resource in general, understanding a specific set of roles that volunteers can fill in parks can be more challenging. Often volunteers will need to work with a myriad of people, including unionized government staff, non-profit park conservancy staff, private sector design and construction staff, and a wide variety of funders.

Some volunteer programs have mastered these challenges, though. The National Park Service Volunteers-in-Parks program saw, in 2013, over 257,000 volunteers contributing more than 6.7 million hours, equal to an additional 3,221 additional full-time staff.

Further, a growing number of parks friends’ groups, as well as the larger park conservancies, are demonstrating how to integrate volunteers as a strategic resource. Many have successfully shown how volunteers can be an integral part of ongoing operations and maintenance activities as well as programming efforts.

The critical role of volunteers – and more importantly how to organize, manage and nurture these programs – isn’t limited to parks organizations, but across non-profit organizations. Before looking specifically at a selection of parks nonprofits, I first researched the literature and studies of how the best non-profit volunteer programs work.

The good news is that there has been a good amount of research and study for volunteer programs at non-profits. As a result, the five myths of volunteering have been posed and debunked, resulting in a growing (but not fully understood) set of practices.

The five myths are:

1. Volunteers are free.

2. You can’t invest in voluntary efforts.

3. Volunteers want only what you want.

4. Meeting volunteers halfway is a recipe for trouble.

5. Volunteer “work” is best defined as that which staff wants no part of.

Each of these five myths have been thoroughly debunked, largely by researchers pointing to the importance of volunteers – beginning with boards of directors – at the heart of each non-profit. The research shows that there are a number of best practices, that require the commitment and support of the Executive Director, Board of Directors and all the staff of the organization. The key role is a dedicated volunteer manager on staff that works across the entire organization, they bring together staff and volunteers to work together on an ongoing and engaged basis.

For the purposes of the study in researching best practices for volunteer programs run by nonprofit parks groups, a variety of organizations in terms of size, budget, and years of experience were selected. The organizations were contacted beginning in late spring to pitch the request and to confirm that participation and accompanying data could be obtained. The cities of the targeted parks organizations are Austin, Texas; Boston, Massachusetts; Brooklyn, New York; and Houston, Texas. Thus, the parks and park conservancies represent two cities in the Northeastern United States and two cities in the Southern (specifically Texas) portion of the United States. All four cities are in the top 25 largest city category and in top 50 Metropolitan Service Areas (MSAs) in the United States.

First, some perspective on the role of non-profit park organizations. The park conservancies movement is growing rapidly, with just under half of the 41 most prominent conservancies in the U.S. coming into existence since the year 2000. The combined spending on operations and capital construction by these 41 conservancies totaled $158.9 million in 2012. However, this is small compared to the annual budgets for all city parks across the U.S. Compare the conservancies’ $158.9 million to the $6.2 billion spent by public parks-and-recreation agencies in the 100 biggest cities in 2012.

As a result, the effect of volunteer programs run solely by parks friends’ groups and park conservancies appears to be small compared to the larger (and still largely undocumented) volunteer programs that many parks agencies run in concert with friends’ groups on an annual basis. Park conservancies have an advantage, however, in that many have been organized by volunteers originally and have at their core a strong volunteer component. A strong education and volunteer component is often embedded in their mission and in fact, was a part of all the organizations that were interviewed. For context, the volunteer program totals for our eight parks conservancies in 2012, which is the earliest year for collected data: a total of 12,250 volunteers contributed 49,755 hours of service worth $1.6 million.

Based on research of practices of non-profit organizations as whole as well as specific research and interviews with key staff, we built our volunteer best practices list for park conservancies the eight best practices of non-profit volunteer programs. 12 The twelve best practices shared by most or all park conservancies and parks friends’ groups are:

1. The non-profit CEO is strongly committed to the volunteer engagement program.

2. There must be a volunteer manager position on staff.

3. Volunteer manager (portion of job or full-time) reports at senior staff level and needs senior staff (and board of directors’) support.

4. Volunteering is a priority and is integrated with the rest of the organization.

5. Volunteer programs are not free.

6. Volunteer programs require clear expectations for staff working with volunteers.

7. Volunteers should be involved “extensively and creatively at all levels of the organization.”

8. It’s in the details on how successful volunteer programs work.

9. Education is a key component.

10. Tracking and Metrics are critical.

11. Innovation in communication and engagement is essential.

12. Innovation in fundraising needs to be integrated with the volunteer program.

Each of these best practices is covered in detail in the full thesis in Chapter 4 (pp 51-72) with many examples gleaned from interviews with key staff of each of the nine park conservancies, building on capsule histories of each of the conservancies in Chapter 3.

Two charts best summarize the 12 best practices for park volunteers and the benefits for parks, the conservancies, the volunteers and the staff. The first, in Figure 1, compares the nine park conservancies in terms of all twelve best practices, based on interviews, research and data obtained. This is valid of as of this writing but will change, as each of these organizations continues to grow, change, adjust and modify their efforts. All nine organizations remain strongly committed to volunteering in parks.

The second, Figure 2, shows the number of volunteers, hours worked and value (per Independent Sector) of all nine volunteer programs over the past five years. The totals are 79,337 volunteers contributing 275,125 hours’ worth $6.89 million, underscoring the important of metrics in volunteer programs. Future studies of park volunteers and volunteer programs will no doubt expand the knowledge gained in this research as park conservancies volunteer programs continue to grow and change.

The park conservancy movement continues to grow and prosper in the United States and is a collaboration with the many parks agencies as thousands of volunteers that make our public parks better. These best practices are the key to success with volunteers in parks and park conservancies.