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| Opportunities & Exposures: Philanthropy |
How Does the Garden Grow?
Peter Harnik
11/01/2004
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One of the great joys of living in a city is wandering to the nearest park
for a concert, a picnic or just to smell the roses. In contrast, a truly
depressing experience is peering into a run-down park space where garbage and
graffiti are the only signs of life. That is why civic-minded philanthropists
will often think of funding a new park or upgrading an existing one when they
ponder ways to give something back to the cities where they have lived or made
it big.
Anyone who has contemplated becoming a financial savior to a city
park should know, however, that funding is only part of the story behind the
fact that some city parks are improving dramatically while others continue to
deteriorate. If a park system lacks sound administration and an organized
vision, we might as well scatter our money on the ground.
In the 1920s
and 1930s, every American city had at least one safe and beloved park,
immaculately kept and extravagantly staffed at taxpayer expense. However, that
was in the decades before America’s attention shifted to the suburbs. After
World War II, city parks began a relentless decline, along with the cities
themselves. The world imagined New York’s Central Park as some kind of no-man’s
land thanks to nightly talk show banter about muggings. Finally, in 1980, a
remarkable landscape historian named Betsy Barlow Rogers decided a line had to
be drawn: If Central Park was not saved, two great neighborhoods—the Upper East
Side and West Side—would collapse along with it. She formed the Central Park
Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that manages the park under contract with
the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation.
Thanks to a Herculean effort
and a sensible agreement with the city, the conservancy has been able to raise
more than $200 million, and the park is once again an unparalleled oasis in a
concrete jungle. The agreement with the city guaranteed that the parks
department would maintain its baseline funding and maintenance level, while conservancy philanthropy would go toward capital improvements and major
restorations.
The success of the Central Park experience has stimulated the
creation of similar conservancies in Atlanta, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Houston,
San Francisco and elsewhere, as well as spurring important gifts from both large
foundations and individuals.
Battle in Seattle
Not all private philanthropists have seen their efforts
bear fruit, however. Paul Allen, the cofounder of Microsoft, was a major donor
in the 1990s to a proposed park and residential development called the Seattle
Commons. An interlocking set of political obstacles—including opposition by some
property owners, a mayor who flip-flopped on the idea, a simultaneous battle
over a controversial stadium proposal and some voter suspicions over Allen’s
motives—conspired to bring down the proposal, which lost by only 1,700 votes in
a citywide referendum.
Anyone considering park philanthropy should ask three
questions that will help ensure success. First, does the city park agency
provide clear and complete annual financial records of how it spends its budget?
If the agency is not fully accountable and transparent, there is a strong chance
that a gift will get lost in the city’s general fund. Do not donate the money to
the park agency, but rather to a private nonprofit park fund that will work with
the city but carefully steward the money. If such an entity does not exist, the
best gift to the city might be to start one.
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