It’s a Fact: Great City Park Systems Require An Army of Citizen Volunteers to Thrive

Across the country, there are hundreds of thousands of parks in more than 15,000 cities and towns—exactly how many is not yet known, but the Trust for Public Land is midway through a major project to map all the parks in urban and suburban area and figure out how many residents have a park or green space within a 10-Minute walk. But one thing we do know, is that in most park systems, citizen volunteers play an increasingly large role in supporting and maintaining parks.

In fact, according to the “2017 City Park Facts”, an annual report released by the Trust for Public Land’s Center for City Park Excellence (CCPE), thousands of volunteers work at city parks around the nation, leading to a sharp increase in the amount of volunteer park help in America’s largest cities.

“More than 16.4 million volunteer hours were donated to city parks in 85 of the 100 largest cities in the past year, a five percent increase from the 2013 total of 15.5 million hours. Since 2008, volunteer hours have risen 6.6 million hours or 40 percent,” said Charlie McCabe, Director of the CCPE.

The data are part of City Park Facts, a compilation of statistics about parks in America’s largest 100 cities. The report comes only six weeks before the May 24 release of ParkScore , The Trust for Public Land’s annual rankings of the best of those 100 city park systems.

I served as the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation for almost 11 years, and in various other parts of that agency for another 16 years. We found that volunteers were essential to the upkeep of the parks. More important, committed volunteers became part of a “parks auxiliary,” advocating for parks at budget negotiation time and also serving as the eyes and ears of the department, even sometime holding our feet (properly) to the fire if we did not perform. The renaissance of NYC’s once rundown park system was made possible in large measure by volunteers, from major donors to neighborhood residents who raked leaves and painted benches.

I took over as Parks Commissioner from Henry J. Stern, who was building on the work of his predecessor, Gordon J. Davis, in rebuilding a badly broken park system, who saw the great potential of volunteers, and worked to create a formal portal for them. First, he created the City Parks Foundation, a non-profit which could receive charitable gifts from generous citizens and institutions. Then, he worked with them to create and run a massive model volunteer program, “Partnerships for Parks.” The theory was that volunteers would be more likely to sign up if they had full-time staff working with them, providing tools and supplies, and sometimes even giving out seed grants. The plan worked so well that now there are nearly 1,000 volunteer groups providing support to more than half the city’s parks.

Mitchell Silver, the current New York Parks Commissioner, has doubled down on working with citizens willing to donate “sweat equity” to help their neighborhood parks and playgrounds. “Volunteers act out of love for their community, and our parks benefit from all that love,” said Commissioner Silver. “Individuals across the city pitch in to clean, plant, paint, and organize activities in our 2,000 parks and playgrounds. Our volunteers keep our parks growing and thriving with contributions as diverse as New York itself.”

Other U.S. city park directors agree.

Jayne Miller, Superintendent of the Minneapolis Parks District (the city park system ranked number one for the last four years in the Trust for Public Land’s ParkScore ® ), reported “In 2016, nearly 12,000 individuals volunteered 151,000 hours of service – an estimated $3.5 million worth of labor --for youth sports, recreation center programs and activities, and in our gardens and natural areas.”

In Jacksonville, Fla., Daryl Joseph, Director of Parks, Recreation and Community Services, agrees with that assessment: “With nearly 400 properties, JaxParks relies on the generous assistance of community volunteers. In recent years, Jacksonville has averaged 18,000 volunteers providing over 800,000 hours valued at $18 million a year.”

Pretty much across the country, in cities big and small, volunteers are a crucial part of the mix in city park systems. Kimberly McNeely, Interim Director of Parks & Recreation in Austin TX agreed, saying; “The City of Austin had over 20,000 volunteers who donated 55,000 hours of service last year. Volunteers play an essential part in creating community.”

San Francisco’s park system, consistently ranked among the top five of the nation’s park system, and one which provides a park within a 10-minute walk of 99 percent of its residents (the “Gold Standard” for urban park access), has long depended on volunteers. Phil Ginsburg, General Manager of the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, says “For San Francisco’s parks, our margin of excellence includes the 180,000 annual hours that volunteers invest in their beloved parks. From Pacific Heights to the Bayview, and from the Sunset to Chinatown, our neighborhood parks and recreation centers are the beneficiaries of the time and sweat donated thousands of San Franciscans each year.”