[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE ROLE OF PARTNERSHIPS IN NATIONAL PARKS
=======================================================================
OVERSIGHT HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL PARKS, FORESTS
AND PUBLIC LANDS
of the
COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
Thursday, September 23, 2010
__________
Serial No. 111-66
__________
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COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia, Chairman
DOC HASTINGS, Washington, Ranking Republican Member
Dale E. Kildee, Michigan Don Young, Alaska
Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, American Elton Gallegly, California
Samoa John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee
Frank Pallone, Jr., New Jersey Jeff Flake, Arizona
Grace F. Napolitano, California Henry E. Brown, Jr., South
Rush D. Holt, New Jersey Carolina
Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Washington
Madeleine Z. Bordallo, Guam Louie Gohmert, Texas
Jim Costa, California Rob Bishop, Utah
Dan Boren, Oklahoma Bill Shuster, Pennsylvania
Gregorio Sablan, Northern Marianas Doug Lamborn, Colorado
Martin T. Heinrich, New Mexico Adrian Smith, Nebraska
Ben Ray Lujan, New Mexico Robert J. Wittman, Virginia
George Miller, California Paul C. Broun, Georgia
Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts John Fleming, Louisiana
Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon Mike Coffman, Colorado
Maurice D. Hinchey, New York Jason Chaffetz, Utah
Donna M. Christensen, Virgin Cynthia M. Lummis, Wyoming
Islands Tom McClintock, California
Diana DeGette, Colorado Bill Cassidy, Louisiana
Ron Kind, Wisconsin
Lois Capps, California
Jay Inslee, Washington
Joe Baca, California
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, South
Dakota
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland
Carol Shea-Porter, New Hampshire
Niki Tsongas, Massachusetts
Frank Kratovil, Jr., Maryland
Pedro R. Pierluisi, Puerto Rico
James H. Zoia, Chief of Staff
Rick Healy, Chief Counsel
Todd Young, Republican Chief of Staff
Lisa Pittman, Republican Chief Counsel
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL PARKS, FORESTS AND PUBLIC LANDS
RAUL M. GRIJALVA, Arizona, Chairman
ROB BISHOP, Utah, Ranking Republican Member
Dale E. Kildee, Michigan Don Young, Alaska
Grace F. Napolitano, California Elton Gallegly, California
Rush D. Holt, New Jersey John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee
Madeleine Z. Bordallo, Guam Jeff Flake, Arizona
Dan Boren, Oklahoma Henry E. Brown, Jr., South
Martin T. Heinrich, New Mexico Carolina
Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon Louie Gohmert, Texas
Maurice D. Hinchey, New York Bill Shuster, Pennsylvania
Donna M. Christensen, Virgin Robert J. Wittman, Virginia
Islands Paul C. Broun, Georgia
Diana DeGette, Colorado Mike Coffman, Colorado
Ron Kind, Wisconsin Cynthia M. Lummis, Wyoming
Lois Capps, California Tom McClintock, California
Jay Inslee, Washington Doc Hastings, Washington, ex
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, South officio
Dakota
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland
Carol Shea-Porter, New Hampshire
Niki Tsongas, Massachusetts
Pedro R. Pierluisi, Puerto Rico
Ben Ray Lujan, New Mexico
Nick J. Rahall, II, West Virginia,
ex officio
CONTENTS
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Page
Hearing held on Thursday, September 23, 2010..................... 1
Statement of Members:
Christensen, Hon. Donna M., a Delegate in Congress from the
Virgin Islands, Prepared statement of...................... 67
Grijalva, Hon. Raul M., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Arizona........................................... 1
Prepared statement of.................................... 2
Holt, Hon. Rush D., a Representative in Congress from the
State of New Jersey........................................ 28
Shuster, Hon. Bill, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Pennsylvania...................................... 23
Statement of Witnesses:
Asbury, Donna, Executive Director, Association of Partners
for Public Land, Wheaton, Maryland......................... 15
Prepared statement of.................................... 17
Chamberlain, Nancy, M.S., CPRP, Associate Dean, Department of
Recreation and Parks, Northern Virginia Community College,
Annandale, Virginia........................................ 46
Prepared statement of.................................... 49
Crandall, Derrick A., Counselor, National Park Hospitality
Association, Washington, D.C............................... 35
Prepared statement of.................................... 36
Moore, Greg, Executive Director, Golden Gate National Parks
Conservancy, San Francisco, California..................... 54
Prepared statement of.................................... 56
Prater, Jim, Citizen Advocate for Congaree National Park, and
Former Executive Director, Richland County Legislative
Delegation, Columbia, South Carolina....................... 59
Prepared statement of.................................... 60
Puskar, Dan, Director of Partnerships and Government
Relations, National Park Foundation, Washington, D.C....... 28
Prepared statement of.................................... 30
Smartt, Susan, President and CEO, NatureBridge, San
Francisco, California...................................... 24
Prepared statement of.................................... 26
Wenk, Daniel N., Deputy Director, National Park Service, U.S.
Department of the Interior................................. 3
Prepared statement of.................................... 4
Additional materials supplied:
Lee, Grace, Executive Director, National Park Trust,
Statement submitted for the record......................... 68
OVERSIGHT HEARING ON ``THE ROLE OF PARTNERSHIPS IN NATIONAL PARKS''
----------
Thursday, September 23, 2010
U.S. House of Representatives
Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands
Committee on Natural Resources
Washington, D.C.
----------
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:02 a.m. in
Room 1324, Longworth House Office Building, The Honorable Raul
M. Grijalva [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Grijalva, Holt, Christensen,
Sarbanes, Bishop, and Shuster.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE RAUL M. GRIJALVA, A REPRESENTATIVE
FROM THE STATE OF ARIZONA
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much. Let me call the
Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands to
order, an oversight hearing on the role of partnerships in the
national parks. I want to welcome and thank all our panelists
for their time. Very much appreciate it.
Private philanthropy has played a vital role in sustaining
and expanding the National Park System since its inception. In
recent years as Federal funding levels have declined park
managers have worked creatively and collaboratively to develop
more and better public-private partnerships more than ever. The
vast majority of these partnerships serve visitors and
taxpayers very well. The new education center at Old Faithful
was funded in part by the Yellowstone Park Foundation, and $13
million in donations from private individuals.
On the West Coast, a nonprofit called NatureBridge
introduces children from some of the poorest neighborhoods in
Los Angeles to hiking and camping in nearby national parks. The
National Park Foundation is providing essential funding for the
Flight 93 memorial in Pennsylvania, and in my hometown of
Tucson the Tohono O'odham Nation helped the National Park
Service build portions of the Juan Bautista de Anza National
Historic Trail.
These and many other partnership are helping the National
Park Service reach out to new audiences and serve the public in
new ways, and we look forward to hearing from our witnesses
today about some of those success stories.
It is important to note, however, that the private
partnerships within the National Park System have developed on
a case-by-case basis and have grown in size and scope without
coherent systemwide standards and management practices in
place. Last year I instructed the Government Accountability
Office to study National Park Service management of these
partnerships and report on how these important relationships
can be improved. The study revealed a number of concerns and
made specific recommendations on how to remedy these concerns.
Today's hearing is an important opportunity to discuss
these and other issues with the agency and with some of the
most successful park partners. We appreciate our witnesses.
Again, thank you for being here. We look forward to their
comments.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Grijalva follows:]
Statement of The Honorable Raul Grijalva, Chairman, Subcommittee on
National Parks, Forests and Public Lands
The Subcommittee will now come to order. Thank you.
Private philanthropy has played a vital role in sustaining and
expanding the National Park System since its inception. In recent
years, as federal funding levels have declined, park managers have
worked creatively and collaboratively to develop more and better
public/private partnerships than ever.
The vast majority of these partnerships serve visitors and tax
payers well: the new education center at Old Faithful was funded in
part by the Yellowstone Park Foundation and $13 million in donations
from private individuals; on the West Coast, a non-profit group called
NatureBridge introduces children from some of the poorest neighborhoods
in Los Angeles to hiking and camping in nearby national parks; the
National Park Foundation is providing essential funding for the Flight
93 memorial in Pennsylvania; and in my hometown of Tucson, the Tohono
O'odham Nation helped the National Park Service build portions of the
Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail.
These and many other partnerships are helping the National Park
Service reach out to new audiences and serve the public in new ways and
we look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about some of these
success stories.
It is important to note, however, that private partnerships within
the National Park System have developed on a case-by-case basis and
have grown in size and scope without coherent, system-wide, standards
and management practices in law.
Last year, I instructed the Government Accountability Office to
study National Park Service management of these partnerships and report
on how these important relationships can be improved. The study
revealed a number of concerns and made specific recommendations about
how to remedy those concerns. Today's hearing is an important
opportunity to discuss these and other issues with the agency and with
some of the most successful park partners.
We appreciate our witnesses for participating in today's hearing
and look forward to their comments.
______
Mr. Grijalva. Any comments, Mr. Bishop?
Mr. Bishop. Just a couple in very quick passing. I
appreciate the Chairman's efforts to begin this dialogue by his
request earlier on, and I look forward to hearing the testimony
of those who have come here, both in written form as well as
what they will say orally here today.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. Dr. Christensen, any comments?
Mrs. Christensen. Not at this time.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. Let me now introduce Deputy Wenk
from the National Park Service for his five minutes, and
opportunity to answer some questions. Thank you, sir.
STATEMENT OF DANIEL N. WENK, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, NATIONAL PARK
SERVICE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
Mr. Wenk. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to
appear before you today to discuss National Park Service
partnerships.
Private philanthropy has played a major role in advancing
the National Park Service. The park system benefitted from
private contributions even before Congress created the National
Park Service on August 25, 1916. Congress formally recognized
the importance of private philanthropy to the parks in 1935
when it established the National Park Trust Fund Board to
receive gifts for the benefit of the National Park Service and
its activities.
Philanthropy is more than a source of land and money for
the parks, it is the means of building and strengthening bonds
between the parks and their advocates. While all taxpayers
contribute to the parks, those who make additional voluntary
contributions have a special interest in their welfare. The
parks and the National Park Service benefit from their devotion
as well as their dollars.
I will focus upon the steps we have taken to ensure the
facilities constructed in national parks through partnerships
and donations are economically sustainable and driven by
National Park Service priorities, as well as our response to
the recommendations made by the General Accounting Office in
the 2009 review of our partnership efforts, and our
collaboration with partners to reach new and younger audiences.
Congress has previously expressed concern about partner-
funded projects that were not prioritized by the National Park
Service but were included in our five-year line item
construction program. The concern focused primarily on those
projects where private fundraising was unsuccessful and
partners subsequently pursued Federal funds through the
appropriation process. Congress also noted its concern about
projects that resulted in new operations and maintenance costs.
Internally, the National Park Service had similar concerns,
and in response we developed the Partnership Construction
Process for the review, approval, and management of capital
projects involving public and private partners. This process
ensures that new park facilities reflect National Park Service
priorities, are appropriately scaled, and are financially and
operationally sustainable. It includes multiple reviews at the
regional and Washington levels, and ultimately requires the
Director's approval for all projects valued $1 million and
greater.
Congressional consultation concurrence is required for
projects $5 million or greater. Projects requiring line item
construction funds are included in the National Park Service
five-year plan, and prioritized based on their readiness and
service-wide priorities.
We have developed tools for use in determining the
appropriate size of a new facility, and estimating the annual
and cyclic operations and maintenance costs. Park partners are
now required to develop business plans that describe how the
partner intends to cover annual and long-term O&M costs.
Overall, this process is resulting in more informed decisions
about proposed projects and giving us the opportunity to modify
the scope or scale of a project as needed in the early phases.
The Service highly values our partners' commitment, energy,
and fundraising efforts. We encourage parks to develop
partnerships and continually review our policies to make it
easier to work with the private sector. We support partners who
share our interest and goals while maintaining the integrity
and accountability of the parks and the National Park Service.
We maintain high standards for construction inside national
parks, and we strive to apply our policies fairly and
consistently.
Partner groups vary widely from small start-up friends
groups to the large and experienced fundraising organization,
so we have developed three templates. Friends groups
fundraising in partner construction agreements reflects the
level of partner activity in a park while providing consistency
and streamlines the process. Improving the skills of the
National Park Service managers is an ongoing effort. We use
various methods, including web technologies, to reach a greater
number of employees each year. Our training sessions regularly
include partners as participants and trainers, allowing
everyone the benefit of alternative perspective on the
partnership program.
Finally, I am pleased to tell you how partners are helping
the National Park Service reach new audiences, particularly
young people. Parks across the country are developing long-term
relationships with schools, nonprofits, and other organizations
to provide young people with opportunities for community
service, internships, employment and just plain fun. We are
strengthening our ties to community organizations like the Boys
and Girls Clubs, YMCAs, national groups like the Youth
Conservation Corps, Public Land Corps, and the Student
Conservation Association, and places strong emphasis on
intercity youth who may not know about national parks or
consider career opportunities with us.
For many young people, their first entry point to a
national park is through curriculum-based education programs
presented at their schools or at one of our park-based
education centers or institutes. Partners often cover full and
partial scholarships for low income and ethnically diverse
students who otherwise could not participate.
Partnerships like these are making a difference. They
enable the National Park Service to reach as never before
hundreds of thousands of young people. Our partners are
contributing not only funding for these programs but their
valuable time, energy, and commitment to youth education,
recreation and park stewardship.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared remarks. I would
be happy to answer any questions you or other members of the
Subcommittee may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wenk follows:]
Statement of Daniel N. Wenk, Deputy Director,
National Park Service, Department of the Interior
Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you
today to discuss National Park Service partnerships. My testimony will
focus on three areas: 1) the continuing progress we are making to
ensure facilities constructed in national parks through the combined
efforts and resources of the National Park Service, partners, and
donors are sustainable; 2) the improvements we have made to our
partnership program in response to recommendations from the Government
Accountability Office and a 2009 Office of the Inspector General report
on the Department of the Interior Challenge Cost Share programs; and 3)
the work we are doing with partners to engage new and younger
audiences.
Private philanthropy has played a major role in advancing the
national parks and the National Park Service. The park system benefited
from private contributions even before Congress created the National
Park Service on August 25, 1916. Congress formally recognized the
importance of private philanthropy to the National Park System in 1920
when it granted the Secretary legal authority to accept donations for
the benefit of the national park and monument system, and in 1935 when
it established the National Park Trust Fund Board to receive gifts for
the benefit of the National Park Service, its activities, or its
services. But philanthropy is more than a source of land and money for
the parks. It is a means of building and strengthening bonds between
the parks and their advocates. While all taxpayers contribute to the
parks, those who make additional voluntary contributions will have a
special interest in their welfare. The parks and the National Park
Service benefit from their devotion as well as their dollars.
CONSTRUCTION
Over the past several years, the National Park Service has taken a
number of specific actions to better ensure that new park facilities
reflect NPS priorities, are appropriately scaled, and are financially
and operationally sustainable over the long-term. Previously,
Congressional committees expressed concern about partner-funded
projects that were not prioritized by the NPS nor included in our five-
year, line-item construction program. The concern centered primarily on
projects where private funds were promised, but where private
fundraising was unsuccessful and partners subsequently pursued federal
funds through the appropriations process. Congress has also noted its
concern about projects that result in new operations and maintenance
costs.
In response to the above concerns, the NPS developed a
``Partnership Construction Process'' governing the review, approval,
and management of capital projects that involve either public or
private partnerships. Evidence that this process has been followed is
required to secure the NPS Director's approval for any partner funded
construction project. The Partnership Construction Process combines our
standard review of all construction projects valued at $500,000 or
greater with our fundraising approval process.
Pursuant to the NPS Partnership Construction Process, projects are
reviewed by the NPS Development Advisory Board and the Department's
Investment Review Board, and are evaluated for compliance with park
planning documents. Additionally, partners are required to have
fundraising plans, feasibility studies and fundraising agreements in
place prior to the launch of a fundraising effort. Those projects
requiring funds from the NPS line-item construction budget must be
included in the NPS five year plan and prioritized, based on the
project's readiness to proceed and service-wide priorities. The
Director's approval is required for construction projects costing $1
million or greater, and congressional consultation and concurrence is
required for projects costing $5 million or greater.
The Partnership Construction Process is designed to ensure that
proposed projects meet NPS needs, that facilities are sized and scaled
appropriately, and that they are financially sustainable. These issues
are considered in the early phase of project consideration and are
documented in a Memorandum of Intent between a park and its partner.
The Memorandum of Intent (MOI) describes (1) the park's need for the
project, (2) the legal authority to carry out the project, (3) the
park's and partner's respective capabilities and readiness to take on
the project, (4) their roles in the operations of the facility, and (5)
how the facilities will be sustained, e.g., through an endowment, fees
for services, or other revenue-generating activities. Park
superintendents submit these memoranda to their Regional Directors as
the first step in gaining regional and Washington-level review and
approval for projects. Regional Directors assess whether the project
and both partners are ready to move forward. This assessment is based
on the documented experience of the partner in raising funds for, as
well as constructing or implementing, a project of the size and scope
discussed in the MOI. The Regional Director also evaluates the ability
and experience of the park staff in managing a project of the scope and
scale proposed.
Projects are further reviewed at the concept and schematic design
phases by the Department's Investment Review Board and the NPS'
Development Advisory Board. At the concept phase, board members review
the park's projected operations and maintenance costs for proposed
facilities. The boards are placing greater emphasis on project
sustainability. Specifically, board members focus on the potential
impacts to park operations and budgets and on the partner's ability to
cover all or a portion of the operations and maintenance costs. This
emphasis is in NPS's interest, and it responds to recommendations by
the Office of the Inspector General and the Government Accountability
Office in their respective 2007 and 2009 reports.
The NPS's Denver Service Center, which manages most large NPS
construction projects, has developed tools for parks to use in
determining the appropriate size of a new facility (Visitor Facility
Model) and for estimating annual and cyclic operations and maintenance
costs (Operations and Maintenance (O&M) calculator). Partners will now
be required to develop a Business Plan that describes how annual and
long-term O&M costs will be covered. This requirement addresses a
recommendation of the GAO report discussed below. The NPS currently
assesses Business Plans using in-house expertise within our concessions
and budget offices. NPS may also obtain the services of business
consultants for such evaluations.
NPS's Partnership Construction Process is resulting in more
informed decisions about proposed projects and provides NPS with the
opportunity to modify the scope or scale of proposed projects in early
phases of project planning. For example, the Partnership Construction
Process resulted in revisions to the scope and associated cost of
projects at Mesa Verde National Park, the Flight 93 National Memorial,
and the Yellowstone National Park visitor center.
The NPS recognizes the need to have a clear understanding, both
with partners and within the agency, regarding the total cost of a
project and about funding assumptions. Furthermore, project proposals
predicated on approaching Congress for earmarked funds that are not
included in the NPS budget, or on undetermined funding sources, are
rejected. The following provision is inserted into partnership
agreements and prohibits partners from lobbying Congress for funds for
a project or program unless it is included in the President's budget
submission to Congress:
Limitation on Lobbying. The Partner will not undertake activities,
including lobbying for proposed Partner or NPS projects or programs,
that seek to either (1) alter the appropriation of funds included in
the President's budget request to Congress for the Department of the
Interior or another federal agency that holds funds for the sole
benefit of the NPS under Congressionally authorized programs, including
the Federal Lands Highway Program; or (2) alter the allocation of such
appropriated funds by NPS or another Federal agency. Nothing in this
paragraph is intended to preclude the Partner from applying for and
obtaining a competitive or non-competitive grant of Federal financial
assistance from a Federal agency, or from undertaking otherwise lawful
activities with respect to any Partner or NPS activity, project or
program included in the President's budget request to Congress. Nothing
in this paragraph should be construed as NPS requesting, authorizing or
supporting advocacy by nonfederal entities before Congress or any other
government official. Except as provided herein and in applicable laws,
nothing in this paragraph shall be construed to curtail the Partner's
ability to interact with elected officials.
GAO REPORT
In 2009, GAO completed a report on Donations and Partnerships. \1\
The report contains seven recommendations for improvement of NPS
management in these areas. The complete NPS response to these
recommendations is contained in the report. Today, I would like to
highlight three GAO recommendations and commensurate NPS responses that
may be of special interest to the subcommittee in the context of this
hearing.
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\1\ GAO-09-386: ``National Park Service: Donations and Related
Partnerships Benefit Parks, But Management Refinements Could Better
Target Risks and Enhance Accountability.''
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GAO recommended that NPS's donations and fund-raising policies be
appropriately tailored to address the level of risk to the agency. In
response, NPS noted that it had revised Director's Order #21 (DO-21) in
2008 to simplify the approval and review process for construction and
non-construction projects in national parks. Furthermore, NPS
streamlined the partnership construction review and approval process
from five phases to three and provided for Regional Director approval
of fundraising efforts under $5 million on the condition that no
federal funds will be contributed to the project or program, thereby
shifting the approval of projects posing less risk to the agency from
the Director to the Regional Directors. Additional improvements to the
NPS partnership program follow.
Partnership Agreement templates have been developed to reflect the
level of risk of a project to the agency. For instance, agreements that
authorize activities considered to be higher risk, such as the donation
of facility designs and facility construction to NPS, include language
to minimize the risk of these activities to the government. For
example, the construction agreement includes very specific language on
intellectual property ensuring that the United States has the
appropriate rights to design and construction documents created in
furtherance of the agreement and thereby reducing the risk of a
conflict over the use of that material. In contrast, agreements
addressing lower risk activities, such as those authorizing fundraising
for design and construction that will be undertaken by NPS, contain
provisions that appropriately address risks posed by fundraising
activities.
GAO recommended that, to increase transparency and efficiency, the
Department of the Interior's Office of the Solicitor work with the NPS
to finalize draft model agreements related to donations and
fundraising. Accordingly, we have worked with the Office of the
Solicitor to finalize three model agreements (templates): a Friends
Group Agreement, a Fundraising Agreement, and a Partnership
Construction Agreement. These agreement templates are now being used by
the parks and their partners. The templates may be modified to address
comments provided by Friends Groups and as a result of NPS's experience
in using them.
GAO recommended that NPS improve National Park Service employees'
knowledge, skills, and experience about fundraising and partnerships
with nonprofit organizations--and encourage employees to improve
nonprofits' understanding of the National Park Service--through
targeted training, resource allocation, recruiting, and promotion
practices. NPS recognizes that professional development in partnerships
is an ongoing need and we continue to expand training in this area. The
NPS has a dedicated partnership training manager who facilitates
national partnership training opportunities and forums annually,
supports regional training efforts, and identifies ways to incorporate
partnership training into broader curricula, such as the
Superintendents Academy and Fundamentals courses. Our courses usually
include partners as participants and trainers, so that we both benefit
from learning about one another's cultures, missions, and the
applicable laws and standards by which we operate.
In order to leverage limited resources, we ``teach the teachers''
by training regional partnership employees who deal directly with
partnership issues in their respective regions, and we are developing a
variety of training methods, including face-to-face training sessions.
We are also beginning to use web technologies to reach a greater number
of employees.
At all levels of the NPS, we recruit managers with partnership
experience and we are requiring that many position descriptions include
partnership-related knowledge, skills, and abilities.
Although these three GAO recommendations have been highlighted, we
would like to note that in response to the GAO recommendation regarding
Data Collection, NPS now has incorporated the ``Annual Report of
Operations and Aid to a Federal Land Management Agency'' form and its
related requirements into the model Friends Group Agreement. And, with
respect to the GAO recommendation for the development of a strategic
plan, the NPS continues to consider this recommendation, and intends to
begin developing such a plan as early as late 2010. This plan will
attempt to define the wide range of NPS partnerships. It likely will
include the many ways the agency partners with nonprofits, government
agencies and educational institutions along with recommendations on how
to enhance the partnership process.
CHALLENGE COST SHARE PROGRAM
The purpose of the NPS Challenge Cost Share Program (CCSP) is to
increase participation by qualified partners in the preservation and
improvement of NPS natural, cultural, and recreational resources; in
all authorized NPS programs and activities; and on national trails. NPS
and partners work together on CCSP projects with mutually beneficial,
shared outcomes. In 2008, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG)
opened an evaluation of all DOI Challenge Cost Share (CCS) Programs
including the NPS CCSP and released their evaluation report in
September of 2009. The report was critical of aspects of all
Departmental CCS programs, citing lack of transparency, documentation,
and internal control reviews as issues. The report recommends that the
Department's CCS programs require 1) CCS funding to be announced on
Grants.gov; 2) partner commitment letters; 3) CCS awards to be reported
in the Federal Assistance Award Data System; 4) accurate tracking of
partner expenditures and in-kind contributions' 5) certifying
agreements documenting that all agreed-to-tasks were performed and
matching contributions provided; 6) return of unspent CCS funds for
reallocation to other projects; 7) accurate reporting of the program's
accomplishments, including federal/nonfederal matching ratio; and 8)
periodic management control reviews. In response, the DOI Office of
Acquisition and Property Management issued a directive dated September
17, 2010 that addresses the eight recommendations.
The directive requires program compliance with existing
Departmental guidance relating to cooperative agreement use,
requirements, and reporting of awards in the Federal Assistance Awards
Data System. The directive also requires greater partner
accountability, outlines reporting requirements, and addresses
performance measures and project monitoring. All bureaus, including the
NPS are expected to revise their program guidance to align with the
Departmental directive.
Prior to the issuance of the DOI directive, in FY 2010, NPS CCSP
guidelines were revised and tightened to address OIG concerns. By June
2010, four of eight OIG recommendations were able to be closed out with
the NPS Office of Financial Management. One recommendation was pending
close-out. Three (relating to Grants.gov posting, Federal Assistance
Awards Data System requirements, and management control reviews) have
been addressed and are currently being reviewed by the NPS Office of
Financial Management. The DOI directive will be sufficient to close-out
the remaining OIG recommendations for the program.
SERVICEWIDE YOUTH PROGRAMS AND PARTNERSHIPS
Much of our attention in the past five years has focused on the
role of partners in funding bricks and mortar projects. We are pleased
to have this opportunity to tell you about another facet of our
partners' support, and that is the role partners have had in helping
NPS engage new audiences - in particular, young people. A primary goal
- and need - of our agency is to make national parks relevant to all
Americans.
Our youth outreach and recruitment strategy is focused and
specific. Park employees across the country are developing long-term
relationships with universities, community colleges, high schools,
technical schools, non-profit organizations, and national organizations
like Outward Bound to provide children with opportunities for community
service, internships, employment, learning, and just plain fun.
Many of our partnership programs focus on training and employing
youth for environmental careers. These programs are designed to engage
young people early, when they are just beginning to think about their
career choices. There is a particular focus on inner-city children of
color, who may not have known about or considered environmental career
opportunities. In addition to mentoring and career development, these
programs allow students to carry their experiences back to their
families and communities, further broadening awareness of the NPS and
the parks. Students continue in these programs throughout their high
school career, providing interested students a link to future NPS jobs
through the Student Temporary Employment Program (STEP) and the Student
Career Experience Program (SCEP), and ultimately permanent positions.
The results are that young people experience the national parks, and
the parks become meaningful to their own lives. It also results in the
NPS having a more diverse workforce, which brings new energy and new
perspectives to our agency and positively influences our operational
and management decisions.
We are able to provide these programs by strengthening our ties to
community centers and organizations like Boys and Girls Clubs and
YMCAs; as well as national organizations like the Greenworks USA Trust,
Greening Youth Foundation, and the Student Conservation Association.
Young people participating in the Public Lands Corps and Youth
Conservation Corps work with park staff to complete a variety of summer
natural and cultural resource conservation projects. Their work
experience includes the chance to explore career opportunities that
have an emphasis on park and natural resource stewardship.
Paid internships in the field of interpretation and visitor
services are offered during the summer to graduating high school
seniors and freshman and sophomore college students in partnership with
a host of non-profit youth organizations. Work experience gained
through internships provides avenues for students to qualify for summer
seasonal employment as GS-04 Park Rangers.
Many of our parks are collaborating with non-profit organizations
to establish education and environmental institutes inside parks, which
typically offer field, classroom, and laboratory environmental science
education and overnight experiences in a park for students in grades K-
12. For many young people, their first entry point to a park experience
is through curriculum-based education programs presented at their
schools or at one of our park-based education or environmental centers.
Our partners often provide full and partial scholarships and therefore
are able to attract and serve low-income and ethnically diverse
students, who otherwise could not participate.
One of our newer programs, the ``Let's Move Outside'' Junior Ranger
program, encourages young people to enjoy the outdoors and be active
and healthy. Park rangers provide programs, workbooks, and incentives
to pursue a Junior Ranger badge. Young people who complete at least one
physical activity in pursuit of their Junior Ranger badge receive a
special sticker that designates them as a ``Let's Move Outside'' Junior
Ranger. It is a great way to learn and have fun in a park.
PARK SPECIFIC YOUTH PROGRAMS AND PARTNERSHIPS
The following programs are just a few notable examples of the many
outstanding ways we are working with our partners to make national
parks more accessible and meaningful to the younger generation, to new
Americans, and to people who have rarely, if ever, experienced a
National Park.
Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area is strategically
partnering with non-profit and government agencies in youth employment,
education and service-learning, volunteerism, and urban outreach. The
park collaborates with the Los Angeles Conservation Corps and more than
30 education partners and public school districts in Los Angeles
and Ventura Counties, to provide programs that engage approximately
50,000 urban youth annually with quality outdoor learning experiences.
These programs help connect young people in cities to the outdoors and
to principles of stewardship, while promoting civic responsibility and
appreciation of our national heritage.
The Golden Gate National Park Conservancy's I-YEL (Inspiring Young
Emerging Leaders) Program is initiated, designed, and coordinated by
young people, who receive support and training in planning and
implementing projects that create positive change in their communities.
Participants engage in many activities, such as teaching drop-in
programs at the park's environmental center, conducting outreach
activities in communities, attending conferences, or creating their own
community service project.
Also at Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the Linking
Individuals to the Natural Community (LINC) Summer High School Program
allows high school students to join a team that works on outdoor
service-learning projects throughout the park, including trail work,
plant propagation, and habitat restoration. In addition, students
attend leadership workshops and take field trips to special park sites
like Alcatraz and Muir Woods, and participate in a four-day camping and
service trip to Yosemite.
The Tsongas Industrial History Center is a partnership of the
Lowell National Historical Park and the University of Massachusetts'
Graduate School of Education, providing heritage education programs for
50,000 school children per year. The park provides the center physical
space in its Boott Cotton Mills Museum building, the university takes
the lead in grant-writing and fundraising to fund the exhibits, and
both partners work jointly on curriculum, outreach and teaching. This
effort won a National Parks Foundation Partnership Award as a model for
effective heritage education.
Working with partners, Lowell's Mogan Cultural Center hosts a
series of programs each year, engage underserved populations and over
three dozen ethnic communities, earlier generations of whom worked in
the textile mills. Recently, the center, through exhibits, lectures,
projects, performances, and other special events greatly expanded the
Park's interaction with newer immigrants from Brazil, Cambodia, Puerto
Rico, Laos, and Sierra Leone.
Two programs of the Thompson Island Outward Bound Education Center,
Green Corps and Island Ambassadors, provide employment for high school
students at Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area, teach them
job readiness skills, and engage them in hands-on stewardship in the
park. This summer the Green Corps cleared trails and invasive plants
from salt marsh areas on Thompson Island, prepared garden areas, and
created compost bins. The Island Ambassadors cleared trails and
campsites, and used the green waste to create artwork such as weaving
and paper. They also assisted with monitoring marine invasive species,
mapping invasive plants, and collecting GPS data for an on-going
phenology \2\ study.
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\2\ The study of periodic biological phenomena, such as flowering,
breeding, and migration, especially as related to climate. The American
Heritage Dictionary.
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Island Pass, sponsored by the Boston Harbor Islands Alliance, is
dedicated to improving the accessibility of the islands for those who
cannot afford to pay the regular public ferry fare. The Island Pass
program focuses on bringing groups to the islands from the YMCA of
Greater Boston, part of the national Y's initiative to build
``Healthier Youth and Healthier Communities.'' The pass is providing
approximately 5,000 people this year with free rides to the islands.
The Island Pass program also provides NPS-guided, State-guided and
self-guided tours to help Boston's under-served youth explore the
islands.
Conclusion
Partnerships like these are making a difference. They enable the
National Park Service to engage, as never before, hundreds of thousands
of young people and new Americans. Our partners are contributing not
only funding for these programs, but their valuable time, energy, and
commitment to youth education, recreation, and park stewardship.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared remarks. I would be happy
to answer any questions you or the other members of the Subcommittee
have.
______
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much, sir.
What aspects of running a national park are the best
candidates for private partnerships and which ones are never
appropriate for any private funding?
Mr. Wenk. A lot of our partnerships center around really
two different aspects. There are the infrastructure aspects or
the projects that might be, as you mentioned, the new visitor
center at Old Faithful. We have many partners who engage in
development of trails and other recreational activities where
there are distinct projects or segments that are identified
first and foremost in the park's general management plan. They
can be agreed to with a park partner that it is an appropriate
activity to undertake, and then fundraising construction can
take place in a logical sequence.
Another area where we work extensively with partners is
programs. It could be, for example, the funding of films.
Partners may take that on as a project and fund a film, an
educational film for a visitor center. They may engage with
youth, as we mentioned, where they would work with local
communities. Some of our partners have emersion programs where
they bring youth into the parks for a period of time. It may be
their first experience, but we have positive results that are
having a positive influence on youth and their association with
the outdoors.
Mr. Grijalva. And what would be an example of a private
funding that would not be appropriate in the park system?
Mr. Wenk. Basically private funding that would go to
commercial activities or commercial endorsement.
Mr. Grijalva. OK.
Mr. Wenk. Partner organizations, we have many different
ways that we provide services to our visitors. One of the ways
that we provide services is through our concessions contract
that are very strongly regulated, and we have concession
contracts that we compete for that provide business opportunity
within parks.
Some partner organizations have approached us about
opportunities that may be for the benefit of a partner as much
as for a park, and we would not allow those where they would
want to advertise, or they would want to take advantage of that
partnership to further their own business cause rather than the
park causes.
Mr. Grijalva. If partners are best in bricks and mortar
construction projects from your answer, does that create an
incentive to build stuff even if that stuff is not needed?
Mr. Wenk. It could but I don't believe it does, Mr.
Chairman. Back in 2005, the National Park Service, along with
Members of Congress and the committees, were concerned about
projects that had been identified and that were under
construction, and at times had failed because the partner
organizations may not have been successful, and they would come
back to Congress for additional funding.
As part of that process, we instituted what we call the
partner construction process, which is a process that basically
assures that before we undertake a partner project of bricks
and mortar that, first of all, it has been an identified
project within the general management plan of the park so that
we are only doing those projects that are of high priority and
identified previously by the park by park planning documents.
Mr. Grijalva. In reviewing some of the testimony from the
other witnesses, a number of complaints have arisen, and they
center around the increasing complexity of the cooperative and
fundraising agreements, and the length of time it takes the
Service to approve those agreements.
What is in the works to streamline or to address those
complaints?
Mr. Wenk. First of all, I would agree that they are getting
more complex, and one of the reasons they are getting more
complex is because the partnerships are getting more complex in
many cases. These are not just simply perhaps the building of a
structure. The partnership may be the building of a structure
that also follows with educational components and it may be a
long-term commitment on the part of the park and the partner,
so they are getting more complex.
One of the things we are doing is we are trying to put
templates into place for three different kinds of agreements.
One of those is a partnership agreement, a general agreement
that certain amount of fundraising could be undertaken to
establish, maintain, and to operate a partnership within a
park.
Mr. Grijalva. But will those three tiers expedite the
process?
Mr. Wenk. We believe they will.
Mr. Grijalva. Templates.
Mr. Wenk. Mr. Chairman, what we have recently done in June
of this past year, I think it is a fair statement to say that
we were stalled to some extent with our partnership agreement
in terms of both the partners and the National Park Service
coming together on the language in the agreement. We sat down
in June with representation of the friends group.
Based on that meeting, they submitted to us a draft
partnership agreement. We have now reviewed that agreement that
they submitted. We sent it back to them with our comments. So,
we believe we have created an atmosphere right now so that we
can move forward, and we are going to get that template done.
That template will, in fact, describe probably 80 percent of
the language that will be common to all partnership agreements,
and we will only be negotiating about 20 percent based on the
particular circumstance, project or program that partnership
may undertake in any one place.
Based on that positive inertia, we think we will move onto
the construction and fundraising agreements as well, and we
think using the same model will be very successful and will
sort of break that stalemate.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. Mr. Bishop?
Mr. Bishop. Thank you. Welcome, Mr. Wenk. We appreciate
your being here again.
I would have a request of you, if possible. If you would
please provide for the record and to my office a list of the
cooperative agreements for the last five years, and a separate
list of the grants or contracts with nonprofits for the last
five years.
Mr. Wenk. We will do that.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you. I understand that the senator with
jurisdiction over this area sent you a letter yesterday for
basically the same kind of information. Which one, obviously,
will you answer first?
Mr. Wenk. Mr. Bishop.
Mr. Bishop. OK, that is the right answer. Good job.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Bishop. I noticed in your testimony that there was a
provision that will be implemented in all the partnership
agreements in the future about limitation on lobbying, and you
provided that on page 5 of your written testimony.
Mr. Wenk. Yes.
Mr. Bishop. Does that mean that these groups that are
participating with you are limited in their lobbying or just
not with the cooperative or the government funds that they
receive?
Mr. Wenk. Mr. Bishop, as I mentioned earlier, there were
times when some partner organizations were not successful in
raising all the money they thought they could raise through
private dollars. There were circumstances when they had done
that, and they had gone back to Congress and looked for those
funds they weren't able to raise through an appropriation.
What this language attempts to do--actually it is not an
attempt--I believe this language does say that they cannot
lobby to change the construction dollars in the President's
budget. If they have made a commitment to raise $10 million,
they cannot lobby for money out of the President's budget from
the Department of the Interior, National Park Service budget
any funds----
Mr. Bishop. So it is a very narrow limitation on that
project.
Mr. Wenk. It is a very narrow limitation, yes.
Mr. Bishop. You alluded to the Inspector General's
investigation that had detailed missteps at the Park Service
with regard to the George Wright Society investigation. To what
level of leadership at the Park Service did this wrongdoing
rise and what actions have been taking on the specific case?
Mr. Wenk. The awareness of this rose to my level. I was
Acting Director at the time that this was done. What we have
done is we have changed the--we have directed that while
employees of the National Park Service can, in fact, be members
of the George Wright Society, they can no longer serve on the
board of the George Wright Society, and that we also are
looking at how we are using the agreements and we are narrowing
defining what can be funded through the agreements.
Mr. Bishop. OK. The Inspector General also instructed the
agency to keep arms-length distance with interactions on
outside groups. Would it be appropriate for a senior Park
Service official to engage in closed meetings with partners on
issues such as planning for the Park Service budget?
Mr. Wenk. I am not aware that that has happened. I don't
believe that that is happening, sir.
Mr. Bishop. Would it be appropriate?
Mr. Wenk. I don't believe it is appropriate.
Mr. Bishop. OK. I think that is what I have for now. Thank
you.
Mr. Grijalva. Dr. Christensen.
Mrs. Christensen. Thank you, Chairman Grijalva, and thank
you for this hearing. I really have had an opportunity to see
how partnerships benefit the park and can benefit the community
as well, and I think partnerships are really the answer to some
of the problems and issues and concerns that you were able to
witness when you visited my district, especially in St. John.
Before I ask a question I just want to highlight some of them
because I think we have benefitted from partnerships.
For example, we have had a long-time relationship with the
Trust for Public Lands and the Nature and Ocean Conservancies,
which have helped to expand our national parks and continue to
help us protect some of our more precious resources. So have
some of our local partnerships with, for example, the St. Croix
and the St. Thomas Environmental Associations. Our local
government has been a great partner, for example, at Salt
River. That is even improving and possibly will be a partner
with us in Castel Nugent in the future.
The Friends of the Park in St. John have been the best
supporter that the Virgin Islands National Park could ask for,
and the St. Thomas Historical Trust, which is a new partner,
has begun to preserve and awaken the rich history of Hassel
Island in the harbor of St. Thomas.
But I would say if there is one area where partnerships
could be strengthened in my district, and probably in others,
it is with the community and, in our case, the long-time
residents or native community in St. John and St. Croix. The
park has made good progress, but I think it still could do some
more work to see itself as more part of the community and not
just in the community. I think more planning needs to
incorporate that of the local and longtime often multi-
generational residents.
So, I look forward to this hearing through our witnesses to
find ways that we can improve the partnership in my district
and in other parts of our country.
I do have as many questions as time will allow. So Deputy
Director Wenk, and I think the Director is on his way to the
Virgin Islands.
Mr. Wenk. I believe meetings were held yesterday
Mrs. Christensen. Yes. So he is there already. OK. But what
methods are used for monitoring whether parks and partners are
following policy requirements, and how frequently are routine
assessments of park partnerships conducted?
Mr. Wenk. We do, in fact, rely on our park superintendents
who we are consistently providing more training, better
training. The first, if you will, partner relationship and
check on the effectiveness and the manner in which the
partnership is being conducted is the park superintendent. The
regional directors, who are the supervisors of those
superintendents, they conduct as part of their appraisal
process on a yearly basis those with partnerships, they review
that partnership arrangement, and part of the evaluation of a
superintendent is based on the effectiveness of that
relationship.
Mrs. Christensen. And in your written testimony you noted
that the National Park Service is dedicated to partnership
training annually. Is there a similar program that serves as a
prerequisite before a partnership can officially begin with the
national park?
Mr. Wenk. I would not say it is a prerequisite, but one of
the things that I am very pleased to be able to say is that it
is not just the National Park Service that does training, our
partners do training as well for their organizations. I have
participated personally in the training of park superintendents
in partnership training. I believe that it is ongoing where you
are using more systems that allow us to do it remotely so we
can take advantage of the Web and get more partners or more
superintendents and partners trained.
We are also training people together so that everyone can
get the same information about what the requirements of
partnerships are.
Mrs. Christensen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. If I may, Mr. Wenk, the GAO report
talks about a risk to the National Park Service. What types of
risks are we trying to avoid?
Mr. Wenk. I think the primary risk that we would want to
avoid is, first of all, we would not want to have a project
that was not appropriate to be done; that wasn't a high
priority within the planning documents and was not an approved
project of the park.
The second risk is we want to make sure that we are
building facilities and we are knowledgeable and understand the
associated operation and maintenance costs, the life cycle
cost, if you will, of that structure. We also would like to
make sure when we sign the agreements with our partners to the
extent possible we would look at what kind of structure can we
put in place, whether it be endowments, whether it be funding,
it may be appropriate in some places, not in others, to cover
some of those costs. I think the risk that we have are greater
cost at the same time where the base operations and funding for
parks are not increasing.
Mr. Grijalva. And I think my last question is kind of a
general one. One of the assets that partnerships bring to the
Park Service and to the parks is creativity, and so how do you
balance that part of it with the supervision of projects that
the Service must conduct?
Mr. Wenk. Mr. Chairman, some of the most successful partner
relationships we have had have been with some of our most
creative superintendents. One of the things that I think we try
to do is that we try very hard to identify those
superintendents and bring them in to help train, to help train
others so that we make sure that we are operating within the
law, regulation, and policy that governs the National Park
Service.
I think what we have tried very hard to do is to encourage
that creativity, but at the same time make sure that it is
operating within the proper constraints.
Mr. Grijalva. OK, thank you. Mr. Bishop? Doctor?
Thank you very much, and let me invite the next panel up if
I may.
Mr. Wenk. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much and welcome to the
panelists, and let me begin with Donna Asbury, Executive
Director, Association of Partners for Public Lands. Welcome. I
look forward to your comments.
STATEMENT OF DONNA ASBURY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ASSOCIATION OF
PARTNERS FOR PUBLIC LANDS, WHEATON, MARYLAND
Ms. Asbury. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As the Executive Director of the Association of Partners
for Public Lands, our organization has a history since 1977 of
cooperation with the National Park Service. Our membership is
comprised of 82 nonprofit organizations, 83 percent of which
serve National Park Service sites. These organizations provide
more than $70 million in aid to National Park Service,
inclusive of major projects, programs and services that respond
to the agency's priorities, and that was in 2008.
All of our members are nonprofit organizations with both
IRS 501[c][3] status, and written agreements with one or more
public lands agencies. These nonprofit partners enable the
National Park Service and its sister public land agencies to
accomplish what they cannot do alone: by engaging the American
public in philanthropy and volunteerism and helping to protect,
enhance, and interpret park resources. Several of these
organizations, like the Grand Canyon Association, Mesa Verde
Museum Association, Mount Rushmore Society, the Rocky Mountain
Nature Association, the Yellowstone Association, and Yosemite
Conservancy, have had relationships and agreements with
individual parks for more than 75 years.
We were asked to share some of the key components that have
made nonprofit partnerships with the National Park Service
successful, and our APPL members consistently relate that first
and perhaps core to success factors are communication, trust,
and a shared vision of the collaborative missions. The second
is that of frequent interaction, joint planning and the setting
of realistic expectations for the partnerships. Another is when
the park and the resource itself is the focus for why
individuals give or why partnership decisions are made and for
which projects are pursued.
And while it is the big projects that get the attention,
the sustaining value is the postcard or the $3 trail guide
purchasers or the thousands of donors who give modestly, these
purchased memories and the opportunity to give become the
building blocks and the glue that binds the public to our
national parks.
We were asked about roadblocks, and the roadblocks to
partnerships are typically bureaucratic problems and they
relate to what is seen, as was mentioned earlier, the
burdensome and time-consuming agreement process, the challenge
of bridging both the nonprofit and the public agency cultures,
and uneven interpretation of policies across and between
levels, locations, and functions of staff.
We would like to see a culture change in viewing
partnerships more in a facilitative role rather than a
regulatory role so that this can move the focus to one of
supporting and empowering partnerships without increasing risk
to the agency. Specifically, National Park Service policies and
agreements frequently fail to acknowledge that Federal and
state law regulates nonprofit organizations. As a result,
National Park Service guidelines and provisions and agreements
sometimes overstep boundaries and add additional levels of
unnecessary regulation to the nonprofits.
We suggest continuing to engage public and private partners
in forums to discuss emerging issues, share the impacts of
external trends, and internal policies, and develop workable
solutions through facilitative discussion and follow up.
We also see that there is a lack of uniformity in how
agreements and policies are applied throughout the Department
of the Interior and the National Park System. Policies and
requirements for entering into agreements are understood and
implemented differently at various levels and locations
throughout the agency. We encourage interagency collaboration
in developing supportive structures and policies that enhance
nonprofit partnerships. This will help to reduce the agreement
and reporting requirement's burden for nonprofit partners who
work with multiple public lands agencies and across park
boundaries.
Partnership relationships are typically managed through
procurement specialists instead of partnership agreement
specialists. Non-partnerships, while they may engage in
contracts or other kinds of agreements as tools to manage the
relationship, primarily they are neither grants nor contracts
in terms of their relationship. They are voluntary, ongoing,
mutually beneficial relationships established for the public
good and for the benefit of the resource.
So, we encourage the development of partnership agreement
specialists as a discipline and a career track within Interior
and within the National Park Service. Ideally if nonprofit
partners and agency staff were assigned one National Park
Service agreement specialist, even if it was one in each
region, this could result in more efficiency and completing the
agreements with the parks and more consistency throughout the
park system.
Mr. Wenk has already talked about the need for the training
both for the public land agency staff and for the nonprofit
partners and the ongoing efforts that are being made in that
arena. We encourage that to continue with the engagement of
both the nonprofit and the public sector so that we can ensure
that there is mutual understanding of the business and culture
of each entity.
Finally, the practice of rotating National Park Service
leadership between the parts results in a lack of consistency
and institutional knowledge relative to the park's
partnerships. Nonprofit partner organizations often become the
point of continuity between the park, the local community
volunteers and donors. Park partners comment that they spend a
disproportionate amount of time having to start over with new
agency leadership in addressing the type, scope and paperwork
necessary to effectively co-manage partnership expectations.
We suggest rewarding longstanding tenure that enables
partnerships to flourish and institute training mentioned
previously so that staff members approach partnerships from the
same level of knowledge throughout the park system.
In summary, nonprofit partnerships benefit from the
credibility and expertise of agency partners as the agencies
benefit from the business, philanthropic expertise and
community connections that partner organizations bring through
their staff and their nonprofit boards. Together, we are better
able to advance innovative ideas, to ensure the relevancy of
national parks to a diverse population of park users, and to
ensure that parks continue to be conserved, enjoyed, and valued
by the public.
The Association of Partners for Public Lands stands ready
to work with the National Park Service to implement the
recommendations within this testimony. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Asbury follows:]
Statement of Donna Asbury, Executive Director,
Association of Partners for Public Lands
Introduction
Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, I thank you for the
opportunity to testify today on the role of partnerships in national
parks. My name is Donna Asbury, and I am Executive Director of the
Association of Partners for Public Lands (APPL) which has a history
since 1977 of cooperation with the National Park Service. Our
membership is comprised of 82 nonprofit organizations, 83% of which
serve National Park Service sites. In 2008, these organizations
provided more than $70 million in aid to national parks inclusive of
major projects, programs and services that respond to the agency's
priorities.
Through their on-site presence in national park visitor facilities,
and in communities nationwide, our member organizations serve as front
line ambassadors to the public, building constituencies that care for
our nation's finest natural and cultural areas. Their work is based
upon a living partnership with each site, anchored in an agreement
founded upon the purpose and management plan for the park as well as
its rich natural, cultural and historic resources.
APPL's efforts have concentrated on the tradition of membership,
volunteerism, education and philanthropy that characterize the best of
nonprofit entities. All of our members are nonprofit organizations with
both IRS nonprofit 501(c)(3) status and written agreements with one or
more public lands agencies. These nonprofit partners enable the
National Park Service and its sister public lands agencies to
accomplish what they cannot do alone, by engaging the American public
in philanthropy and volunteerism and helping to protect, enhance, and
interpret park resources.
As the June 2009 GAO report on National Park Service Donations and
Related Partnerships acknowledges, these mission-based nonprofits are
essential and increasingly valuable partners to the National Park
Service, providing significant services in addition to monetary
contributions. However, it should be noted that philanthropy and
partnerships within the parks are not new. Thirty national parks were
created through private donations, and many more are enhanced by the
contributions of people who care about them. Several park partner
organizations, like the Grand Canyon Association, Mesa Verde Museum
Association, Mount Rushmore Society, Rocky Mountain Nature Association,
Yellowstone Association and Yosemite Conservancy have been partners
with individual national parks for more than seventy-five years.
I have organized my testimony around the key questions posed to
panelists as being of interest to Subcommittee members, highlighting
success factors in NPS-nonprofit partnerships as well as barriers to
success most frequently expressed by our membership. Additionally, I
have suggested recommendations for consideration that may address, at
least in part, the concerns and barriers that can impede these
partnerships.
What have been some of the key components that have made your
partnerships with the National Park Service so successful?
When asked, our APPL members consistently relate the following
factors to be central to the success of their partnership with the
National Park Service. To illustrate, I have included direct quotes
from executive directors of APPL member organizations relative to these
partnership success factors:
Communication, trust, and a shared vision of our
collaborative mission. . .
``Probably the key component of success for our
organization and NPS throughout the years has been a
mutual respect for the missions of our organizations
and an appreciation for the work we do in the very
broad scope of caring for our nation's cultural,
historical and natural resources. Always we keep this
mind as we work through any `roadblocks' and
challenges.''
``As an association, we do not have any agenda that
does not include our partner, and we feel confident
that our partner values us and trusts us and sees us as
a crucial player in their future.''
Frequent interaction, joint planning, and making a
concerted effort to ``be there'' for the other partner. . .
``We confer together regularly, participate in joint
meetings, and as a result we are able to stay on the
same page and have mutual buy-in on decisions. We feel
valued by park staff and no one has any hidden
agendas.''
``We are very fortunate that our offices are under the
same roof as the park administration, enabling us to
confer daily on big picture issues as well as
details.''
When the park, the resource itself, is the focus--for
why individuals give, for why partnership decisions are made,
and for which projects are pursued. . .
``When nonprofit partners and agency staff decide that
the priority is the resource, human dimensions change.
The focus is moved from the nonprofit or the agency to
the park, enabling personal agendas to be put aside in
favor of developing solutions, projects, and programs
that are meaningful and sustainable.''
``Fundraising success is best achieved when both the
nonprofit partner and the National Park Service fully
embrace the importance of the goal/project and strongly
believe the goal/project will benefit both the partner
and the NPS.''
When park management, from the top down, recognizes
and communicates the relationship with the nonprofit partner as
critical to success. . .
``The full potential of each partner is realized when
communication, cooperation and collaboration between
all nonprofit partners at an NPS park or site is
encouraged and nurtured.''
``The potential for partner success is enhanced when
the National Park Service is consistently pro-active in
providing generous (and always tasteful) acknowledgment
of the support being provided by the nonprofit
partner--whenever possible and in as public a way as
possible--in order to encourage future support.''
A mutual understanding of the tremendous potential of
moving people along a continuum in their support for a park...
``While it is the big projects that get the attention,
the sustaining value is the postcard or $3 trail guide
purchaser, or the thousands of donors who give
modestly. These purchased memories, and the opportunity
to give, become the building blocks, the glue that
binds the public to the national parks.''
``Making that very personal connection with park
visitors is one of the best ways nonprofit support
groups are able to add value to their park's
operations. A casual visit to a park visitor center can
result in a low level annual membership with a
cooperating association. A follow-up newsletter can
generate more interest--perhaps in attending a site-
based educational program presented or sponsored by the
nonprofit partner. This program presents the nonprofit
partner the opportunity to develop a personal
relationship with the member/donor and can lead to
additional participation in park events or volunteer
activities, with NPS staff present to convey the park's
story. This continuum leads to a much higher level of
financial support for the park, and results in a very
efficient use of park management's time in conveying
the park's story and supporting the fund raising
effort.''
Building upon established partnerships, with
realistic expectations for what nonprofit partners can achieve.
. .
The superintendent began discussions with us about
whether or not we would be willing to pursue
fundraising in behalf of the park. We agreed to form a
foundation under the umbrella of our association and
take some small, project-specific steps into the
fundraising arena. We maintained our same board of
directors and formed a foundation committee to oversee
the new fundraising component of our operation. With
existing staff we moved forward with annual project-
specific goals, starting by raising $50,000 to help
rehab a historic building in the park. The
superintendent was sensitive to our need to start small
and we have been able to continue to raise more money
each year for specific projects decided upon mutually
by the Park Service and the Foundation.
What types of roadblocks have challenged or prevented your
organization from fully benefiting from your partnership with
the parks?
Nonprofit organizations work in partnership with the National Park
Service to realize common goals and to provide a public benefit.
Roadblocks are mostly bureaucratic, and relate to what is seen as a
burdensome and time consuming agreement process; the challenges of
bridging nonprofit and public agency cultures; and uneven
interpretation of policies across and between levels, locations and
functions of staff.
Specifically,
NPS policies and agreements frequently fail to
acknowledge that federal and state law regulates nonprofit
organizations, requiring them to operate according to their
tax-exempt mission. As a result, NPS guidelines and provisions
in agreements sometimes overstep boundaries, and attempt to add
additional levels of unnecessary regulation of the nonprofit.
There is a lack of uniformity in how agreements and
policies are applied throughout the Department of Interior and
the National Park system. Policies and requirements for
entering into agreements are understood and implemented
differently at various levels and locations throughout the
agency. This is especially problematic for nonprofit
organizations that work with multiple agencies, that work
across park or regional boundaries, or whose activities are at
a level requiring multiple agreements or multiple layers of
approval.
Partnership relationships are treated like contracts
and managed through procurement specialists instead of
partnership agreement specialists, sometimes with the
perspective that partnerships should be competitively bid.
Nonprofit partnerships are, as a whole, neither grants nor
contracts. They are voluntary, ongoing, mutually beneficial
relationships established for the public good and for the
benefit of the resource. Even in situations where a contract is
the appropriate vehicle for accomplishing a goal, the parks
often do not have the trained personnel on-site that know how
to handle these contracts.
There is a lack of understanding by many agency
staff, including solicitors, contracting officers and
procurement specialists, as to how nonprofits work and how they
are regulated. In the words of one association executive:
``Typically the contracting officers that are assigned to work
through the complexities of building these agreements with us,
and getting funds to us, do not understand the mission of our
organization and our ties to the parks.''
As the 2009 GAO Report on National Park Service
Donations and Related Partnerships notes, there is a need to
improve NPS employees' knowledge, skills and experience about
fundraising and partnerships with nonprofit organizations, and
to improve nonprofits' understanding of Park Service policies
and procedures. Meeting this need for targeted and
comprehensive training and reference materials requires
collaboration and involvement of the nonprofit sector to ensure
accuracy of content, and understanding of the business and
culture of each entity. Too frequently, training and guidance
are developed separately from within each sector rather than
collaboratively.
Care must be taken not to create agreements and
policy that attempt to address every possible situation, or to
cover any and all potential partnership risks, regardless of
the level or scope of the activities to be conducted by the
nonprofit partner. This creates unnecessary paperwork and
oversight, discourages partnerships from developing, and drains
time and energy that could be directed to the agency's and the
organization's missions.
The agreement approval process, and the inability of
the agency to move agreements quickly through the process, is
the most often sighted frustration among nonprofit partners to
the National Park Service. These process delays can result in
escalating project costs, loss of donor support, and in some
cases the delay or abandonment of viable projects and
initiatives.
The practice of rotating NPS leadership among and
between parks results in a lack of consistency and
institutional knowledge relative to the park's partnerships;
and is disruptive of the type of long-term relationships that
characterize the most outstanding examples of NPS partnership
success. Nonprofit partner organizations and their staff are
often the point of continuity between the park, the local
community, volunteers and donors--and the point of continuity
relative to the agreements and procedures that define their
partnership functions with the agency. Because of the
inconsistencies in training and interpretation of policies
throughout the NPS system, park partners comment that they
spend a disproportionate amount of time having to ``start
over'' in addressing the type, scope, and paperwork necessary
to effectively co-manage partnership expectations.
Have policy changes from within the National Park Service affected
your ability to have successful partnerships?
A continuing focus on ``trouble cases'' tends to result in a
reactionary response within the agency that overshadows the ongoing
positive accomplishments that happen daily through NPS partnerships.
The more emphasis placed on successes through nonprofit partnerships,
the more burdensome the policies and procedures have become. Policies
are often in a state of change, and the information regarding these
changes doesn't flow effectively through the system to field staff and
partners--resulting in confusion, delays, and at times a negative
impact on the ability to implement a program or project.
The time it takes to develop agreements, especially cooperative
agreements, consumes valuable agency and nonprofit partner resources
that could be applied to meeting park and visitor needs. While APPL
itself is not a fundraising partner for the parks, we do at times
collaborate under project specific cooperative agreements to conduct
training, facilitate meetings, or develop partnership resources and
tools. As a result, we have experienced first-hand the variations in
how agency staff interpret policies, and the delays that accompany the
agreement process. This has become amplified in recent years as
cooperative agreements have come under more scrutiny.
What can be done to address the challenges and roadblocks noted above?
APPL member organizations endorse the importance of agreements that
clarify and support the role of NPS and its partners. However,
partnerships are at their core about relationships, and there is
therefore no such thing as a ``no risk'' partnership. But when
nonprofit partners and agency staff decide that the priority is the
resource, the focus is moved from the nonprofit or the agency to the
park, enabling personal agendas to be put aside in favor of developing
solutions, projects, and programs that are meaningful and sustainable.
A cultural change from viewing partnerships in a ``facilitative
role'' rather than a ``regulatory role'' can move the focus to one of
supporting and empowering partnerships without increasing risk to the
agency. The following opportunities exist to further advance
partnerships within NPS, and to help ensure a sound foundation for
future partnership successes:
Develop partnership agreement specialists as a
discipline and a career track within Interior and within the
NPS. Ideally, if nonprofit partners and agency staff were
assigned one NPS partnership agreement specialist--even if it
was one in each region--this could result in more efficiency in
completing the agreements with parks, and more consistency
throughout the park system.
Encourage inter-agency collaboration in developing
supportive structures and policies that enhance nonprofit
partnerships. This will help to reduce the agreements and
reporting requirements burden for nonprofit partners working
with multiple public lands agencies.
Work with nonprofit partners to provide reciprocal
training for agency staff and nonprofit representatives so that
all partners carry out their work in productive relationships
that are characterized by a high degree of mutual
understanding, transparency in management policies, shared
goals, and effective communication.
Streamline requirements within public lands agencies
for nonprofit partners to work under mutually beneficial
cooperative agreements.
Involve nonprofit partners at the earliest possible
stages in planning and decisions affecting their relationship
with public lands.
Engage public and private partners in forums to
discuss emerging issues, share the impacts of external trends
and internal policies, and develop workable solutions through
facilitated discussion and follow-up.
Exempt established cooperating associations and
friends organizations from competitive bidding of their general
agreements. Nonprofit partners to the National Park Service
bring durability and tenure not only to the agency but to its
donors. Competitive bidding for cooperative agreements and
their components sends a contrary message and imposes
unnecessary and potentially damaging disruption to these
partner relationships at a time when they are most needed.
What types of accomplishments has your organization achieved that
directly benefits parks and their mission?
APPL helps serve as a bridge to increasing partnership
understanding among nonprofits and public lands agencies. We facilitate
dialogue through in-person meetings, conference call forums,
newsletters, workshops, training materials and site-based
consultations.
Among our member nonprofit organizations, the benefit is realized
through contacts made with park visitors that reinforce the theme and
purpose of the park, the number of site-specific publications now in
print because of cooperating association efforts, the educational
seminars, field institutes, and the events that connect people to their
parks, and the philanthropic dollars raised in support of park
priorities.
The following are just a few examples of the variety and impact of
these partnerships:
Through the Acadia Trails Forever program, Friends of
Acadia supports maintenance of Acadia's 130-mile footpath
system, used by hundreds of thousands of people each year. Some
trails have been made wheelchair accessible. Some abandoned
trails are being restored, and new village connector trails are
being established to encourage people to walk (rather than
drive) from island towns into the park.
Alaska Geographic works with NPS and a concessionaire
to distribute a tour booklet program developed collaboratively
and provided by the concessionaire to all of its tour
participants. Revenue from this initiative supports educational
programming at Murie Science Center at Denali as well as
throughout the parks of Alaska.
Pacific Historic Parks (formerly Arizona Memorial
Museum Association) has raised nearly all of the significant
funding for the new Pearl Harbor Museum and Visitor Center.
Phase I of the project was opened to the public on February 17,
2010 and dedication of the completed project is scheduled for
December 7, 2010. The completion and success of this project
will ensure that millions of visitors each year will better
understand the history of Hawaii, Pearl Harbor, and WWII as
well as appreciate the sacrifices made by many at Pearl Harbor.
Friends of Big Bend raised over $250,000 for the new
educational exhibits that grace the walls of the newly re-
opened Panther Junction Visitor Center in the park. Other
support to the park includes a $10,000 project to lay the
foundation for future Big Bend National Park podcasts and other
multimedia video materials.
Over the last twenty years the Rocky Mountain Nature
Association has tackled 44 special improvement projects
benefiting the park, ranging from educational exhibits to
visitor centers, from wheelchair accessible trails to land
purchases, from publications to saving historic buildings.
Sequoia Natural History Association (SNHA) works with
NPS to educate the public about environmental issues, not just
through interpretive programs and materials, but through their
own actions. Two years ago, SNHA began eliminating plastic bags
in visitor center stores, asking visitors to hand carry small
purchases or consider buying an inexpensive reusable bag. This
effort has taken an estimated 50,000 plastic bags out of the
waste stream annually. Last year the association partnered with
NPS to obtain grants and donations to make Crystal Cave
interpretive tours, operated by SNHA in Sequoia, the first cave
tour operation to be operated 100% on solar power. Through
interpretive signage, this project is also a visible message to
the 55,000 annual cave visitors.
Western National Parks Association--operates
educational bookstores in 66 national park areas in 12 states
and then returns proceeds of sales to their NPS partners for
interpretive, educational and research projects. Eastern
National operates in 150 national park areas in 30 states.
These cooperating associations, by applying shared resources,
enable parks that could not support their own independent
bookstore operation, or that are not viewed as ``commercially
viable'' to have high quality park specific themed items that
convey the story of the resource to the visitor.
Yosemite Conservancy over the last 22 years has
funded over 300 projects totaling more than $55 million in
support. Many of these projects have improved the
infrastructure supporting visitor enjoyment. As one example,
support for the Junior Ranger program provided the opportunity
for 27,000 kids to get their badge in 2009.
How does your organization benefit from your relationship with the
parks?
Our organization, as well as our member organizations, benefit from
the ability to fulfill our nonprofit mission--which complements the
mission of the National Park Service. Nonprofit partners bring
expertise in areas that balance agency staff members' expertise, and
vice versa. Nonprofit partners benefit from the credibility and
expertise of their agency partners, as the agencies benefit from the
business, philanthropic expertise, and community connections that the
partner organizations bring through their staff and nonprofit boards.
Together, we are better able to advance innovative ideas, ensure the
relevancy of national parks to diverse populations of park users, and
ensure that parks continue to be conserved, enjoyed, and valued by the
public.
In most cases, cooperating associations and friends groups were
formed to support a specific park or a group of parks. Therefore, they
view their organizations as existing to benefit the park(s), not the
other way around. As one association executive director put it, ``the
only benefit is seeing projects and programs funded for the protection
of the resource and the enjoyment of the visitor.''
In working with parks, how are projects determined? Are project ideas
driven by park needs or are they more likely to originate with
your organization?
National park partners agree that projects are driven by park
priorities and needs. However, ideas are often spawned because of the
strong partnership, planning and dialogue that enable nonprofit
partners to bring ideas to the table for consideration.
The nature of philanthropy and earned revenue requires significant
advance planning to ensure that staffing and resources are dedicated to
activities that will have the most impact; and to ensure adequate time
to plan for business operations and to nurture philanthropic support.
Typically the park submits its requests to the board or a project
review committee of the cooperating association or friends group, which
then selects or approves projects for a given year based upon the
park's recommendations and the capabilities of the partner to achieve
the requested level of support. Depending upon the type of project or
program, and the capacity of the partner or the park to manage the
project or program, decisions will be made as to how the project will
be carried out. In some situations the association or friends group
will fund the project to be carried out by the Park Service. In other
instances, the association or friends group collaborates with the park
to accomplish specific projects or programs. This collaboration spawns
creativity, better planning, and more productive and sustainable
projects.
The following example is illustrative of how a program need was
articulated by park leadership and then implemented collaboratively
with the Park Service. ``In the case of our Field Institute, the
superintendent laid out his vision to us, then charged us to move
forward and create a business plan. Initially, our association's vision
for the Institute was markedly different from that of the Park Service,
but both sides kept their doors and minds open and trust and
cooperation prevailed, resulting in an institute that has worked for
everyone.''
Summary
Americans have always treated their public lands generously. Today,
more than ever, the means to do this rests with the nonprofit partners
of those public lands, as the nation wrestles with multiple demands
upon the federal budget and public land agency budgets are stretched.
APPL and its members are at the nexus of the connection to public
support for public lands.
The time has come to fully acknowledge, encourage, and foster the
partnerships that provide the heart and soul of our stewardship efforts
to protect our world-class natural, cultural and historical resources.
The key to the long-term health of our nation's treasured public lands
is partnerships.
APPL provides information, facilitates communication, and delivers
training to build the capacity of these organizations and their agency
partners to deliver the highest quality programs, products, and visitor
services. APPL fosters standards of excellence for nonprofit partners
and helps agencies understand how to approach productive relationships
that extend resources and serve visitors. We have developed
organizational assessment tools to assist parks and partners in
determining their strengths, potential obstacles, and capabilities to
increase their programmatic, fundraising, and earned income benefits.
We stand ready to work with NPS to implement the recommendations within
this testimony.
We believe that caring for our national parks is a shared
responsibility. The job is big and resources are limited. As more and
more Americans turn to national parks for their recreation and green
space, as more and more schools seek laboratories for learning, as
communities and citizens look for volunteer and economic opportunities,
nonprofit partnerships grow increasingly necessary.
______
Mr. Grijalva. Before I turn to Susan Smartt, let me ask our
colleague who has joined us if he has any opening comments at
this point?
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE BILL SHUSTER, A REPRESENTATIVE FOR
THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank
all the witnesses for being here today. I appreciate you
holding this hearing.
Our national parks are a great source of pride and it is
imperative that they thrive and tell the story of this nation.
As I said, I want to thank the witnesses for being here today.
I have the great honor of having Flight 93 National
Memorial in my congressional district. From the beginning, I
have been involved in the process of completing a memorial
honoring those that gave their lives on September 11th, and I
want to take a moment to point out that the building of Flight
93 Memorial has been a collaborative process and a great
experience and a great example of how these public-private
partners should work.
From the tragic day when the heroes of Flight 93 gave their
lives to stop a terrorist attack on our nation's capital, this
work continues on the memorial, and the local community has
been there, first establishing a temporary memorial site with
volunteers to show folks around and they continue to protect
the site and tell the story of the heroes of Flight 93.
In 2002, Congress authorized and President Bush signed into
law the Flight 93 National Memorial Act creating a permanent
national memorial as part of the National Park Service System.
The Fight 93 Advisory Commission was created as part of this
law to ensure that local citizens had a voice in the process,
and we have had several leaders in Somerset County: Jerry
Spangler, Pam Tokar-Ickes, Greg Walker, Gary Singel, Donna
Glessner and Dan Sullivan, they have been involved to make sure
the local concerns have been heard all along, which I think is
extremely important.
Together with the National Park Service and the National
Park Foundation, the Flight 93 Advisory Commission, the
families of Flight 93, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,
the progress on the memorial is being made with the first phase
of construction being completed by the tenth anniversary, which
will be next year. Over $17 million in private donations has
already been raised for the completion of the first phase of
the memorial, and the families of Flight 93 are targeted to
reach their committed goal of raising $30 million for the
construction of the memorial.
Mr. Chairman, this is exactly how the process should work,
strong local support, community input and collaboration among
affected parties should always be part of the process.
So, again, thank you very much for holding this hearing,
and again appreciate you taking the time to let me make a
statement.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you, and congratulations on the fine
work on that memorial.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you. And they have broken ground and we
should be on target.
Mr. Grijalva. Congratulations.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you.
Mr. Grijalva. Let me now ask Ms. Susan Smartt, President
and CEO of NatureBridge in San Francisco, I had an opportunity
to meet with when I was there to meet with some of your folk
involved in that, and it is an excellent program, by the way.
STATEMENT OF SUSAN SMARTT, PRESIDENT AND CEO, NATUREBRIDGE, SAN
FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
Ms. Smartt. Thank you, Chairman Grijalva, Ranking Member
Bishop, and other Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for
the opportunity to testify this morning.
I am Susan Smartt, President and CEO of NatureBridge and I
am honored to be provide testimony on partnerships in the
National Park Service.
Our mission at NatureBridge is to provide science and
environmental education in nature's classrooms to inspire a
connection to the natural world and responsible actions to
sustain it. We do this by providing three- to five-day
residential programs in our national parks, and we contract
directly with schools for these programs and other community
groups. We have been working in partnership for 40 years and
currently operate in four national parks. Our first institute
was in Yosemite National Park in 1971, inspired by a science
teacher from Los Angeles who thought his kids could learn
science better in nature's classrooms. We were then invited to
expand to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and then
invited to expand to Olympic National Park, and finally last
year we opened our fourth institute in the Santa Monica
National Recreation Area, again at the invitation of the
National Park Service.
We have a long history of collaboration with the National
Park Service. It is easy to focus on partnerships that have not
gone well, but it is critically important to remember that far
more partnerships are working extremely well, so I would just
like to share with you some of the things we think we have
learned in our 40 years about partnerships.
First of all, as was mentioned by Donna, close alignment of
mission and programs is essential to a good partnership. Also,
our financial model does not require any funding from the
National Park Service. We have always been financially self-
sufficient organization, which has served us well. We raise
money from fees for the programs, but we also raise about $2
million a year to scholarship schools and kids from underserved
communities that would not otherwise be able to afford our
programs.
Finally, we are in close communication with the National
Park Service, and I cannot emphasize that enough at all levels,
not only the park level, the regional level, and the national
level to make sure that we remain in alignment with National
Park goals and missions.
So, our accomplishments over these 40 years we have
educated one million participants in our national parks in
environmental science education. They are the next generation
of national park supporters and stewards. We are reaching and
building diverse and underserved audiences that better reflect
the face of America through our scholarship program. We are
building community: all very important benefits to the national
parks.
Of course, our organization has also benefitted
tremendously from being a National Park partner. There are no
better classrooms for our education than our magnificent
national parks. We are honored to be associated with the
National Park Service, and the values it stands for. This
association provide us with a stamp of approval and
credibility, and we honor that.
As I said earlier, we started in 1971, and we have expanded
by invitation. Currently there are two parks on the East Coast
that have contacted us and are interested in us expanding our
programming to their parks. We would not even consider
expanding to a new park without strong leadership and
commitment from the park to support the program. We work in
close collaboration with the National Park Service at all
levels, and know that is fundamental to our relationship.
I do want to talk a bit about the difficulty of some of the
barriers and things that are affecting our partnership and
other nonprofit partners. You will hear a lot today about legal
agreements, it has already been mentioned by the first two
witnesses, so I will not spend a lot of time on it other than
to say that the increasing complexity of these agreements have
become unworkable in some respects. The tone has moved from
partnership as collaborations to a legal transactional approach
which doesn't serve us well. No risk partnerships do not exist
and should not be the legal bar that is set.
The inconsistency of policies across parks: For those of us
that work in multiple locations, this could be quite
significant and frustrating. As we make plans to expand our
programs to new parks, it will save countless hours and money
if there is a more standardized approach to the manner in which
partnerships are established and administered.
The cultural challenges exist also. There are differences
between government agencies and nonprofits, and a key to
effectiveness is understanding those differences and figuring
how to bridge them.
Decisionmaking needs to be done more quickly. When you are
working with a donor community they have an expectation that
their donations will be used effectively and efficiently, and
if it takes five years to negotiate a fundraising agreement,
that is the wrong message to our funders. Those kinds of delays
are costly, frustrating, and can inhibit timely implementation
and execution of partnership agreements, which negatively
impact program and fundraising activities.
So, our three simple recommendations are:
First of all, we support the efforts that are underway that
Dan Wenk mentioned earlier, the current efforts to streamline
and standardize partnership agreements. We think that will go a
long way to removing some of the more bureaucratic barriers.
This includes the approval process and layering of agreements.
It will also improve mission-related results for both partners
and save both donor and taxpayer money.
We would like the National Park Service to consider a
proven partner status for long-time partners. This would allow
partners who have worked successfully with the National Park
Service over several years to benefit from that proven track
record, and again hopefully eliminate some of the hurtles and
barriers we have now to expanding programs.
Finally, we would like to see more inclusion and engagement
of nonprofit partners in operational leadership training at all
levels of the National Park Service, and we are ready to help
with that.
Thank you all for the opportunity testify this morning. We
honor and value our partnership with the National Park Service,
and we are ready and willing to work with Congress and the
National Park Service to strengthen and improve these nonprofit
partnerships. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Smartt follows:]
Statement of Susan Smartt, President/CEO, NatureBridge
Dear Chairman Grijalva, Chairman Napolitano, Ranking member Bishop
and other members of the subcommittee:
Thank you for the opportunity to submit written testimony to the
Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands of the
Committee on Natural Resources with specific regard to ``The role of
partnerships in National Parks.'' We intend to highlight the enormous
benefits to citizens, especially our youth, that are the result of
effective and highly productive partnerships with our National Parks.
We also will focus on some of the hurdles that must be overcome if we
are to make this relationship sustainable over the long term.
We are very pleased that the Subcommittee is seeking information
from National Park partners that will enhance our ability to work
together more productively. We all understand that partnerships are
mutually beneficial and an excellent way to leverage limited resources.
NatureBridge has been working in partnership with the National Park
Service (NPS) for almost 40 years. NatureBridge currently operates
residential environmental education programs in four National Park
locations: the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area,
Yosemite National Park, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and
Olympic National Park. Launching more campus programs in National Parks
in the eastern United States is contemplated in our recently completed
Strategic Plan. Ours is a history of mutually beneficial collaboration.
Indeed, there is great excitement about the impact we are able to have
on the lives of youth and the quality of life in their home communities
through our partnership with the National Park Service.
One of the top priorities of NPS Director Jon Jarvis is to increase
environmental education and outreach to underserved youth. The recent
launch of the President's America's Great Outdoors Initiative speaks to
the need to reconnect Americans to the outdoors. It emphasizes reaching
out to underserved youth and building new constituencies for our
treasured parks. Director Jarvis' priorities and the President's
initiative both highlight the need to expand the very programs that
NatureBridge offers. The success of these efforts can only be achieved
with increased and more effective and efficient public/private
partnerships.
NatureBridge is looking to strengthen an already rewarding
partnership with the NPS. We seek to advance our common mission and
develop a closer working relationship. We are concerned that the
hurdles to effective and sustainable partnerships have increased and
indeed may severely limit our ability to expand beyond our four
campuses.
Our testimony focuses on broad issues that impact our entire
organization rather than one specific park. We start with the
assumption that we are building on a successful model of shared mission
with the National Park Service and this testimony is offered in the
spirit of increased effectiveness and the need to leverage increasingly
scarce resources.
Partnership Limitations, Barriers and Frustrations
1. Difficulty of Completing Legal Agreements
The increasing complexity of public/private partnerships has
resulted in Agreements (Cooperative, Fundraising, etc.) that are
overreaching and unworkable. The staff time and financial resources
spent on reviewing and redoing agreements is frustrating and wasteful,
can take several years to complete and in the end fosters a climate of
legal adversaries rather than partners.
The process of reviewing agreements is highly centralized; drafts
acceptable to the Park or the Region may be extensively questioned by
the Washington Support Office (WASO), which can at times seem
disconnected from the field. ``No risk'' partnerships do not exist and
should not be the legal bar that is set.
For example, our Yosemite Institute has operated under a series of
agreements with the NPS since 1971, but in 2010 questions from WASO
about the NPS's legal authority to allow us to enter into agreements
has caused extensive delays. Our most recent experience with the
Fundraising Agreement for our proposed new Environmental Education
Center in Yosemite National Park is a perfect example of what is not
working. We first received a 20 page draft modeled from former partner
agreements that has now mushroomed into over 40 pages after review by
NPS solicitors.
Meanwhile, at Golden Gate National Recreation Area, NatureBridge's
Headlands Institute campus is operating under its fourth successive
one-year extension of its general agreement. After operating and
providing programs for over 30 years in the Park, the partnership feels
more like a landlord/tenant arrangement as we are now being asked to
pay approximately $140,000 annually in ``service district charges'' to
continue our programs in the Park.
NatureBridge recognizes and values the uniqueness of each park but
is frustrated by our inability either to use agreements signed in one
park as a template for a similar agreement in another park, or to
negotiate a master agreement that would cover NatureBridge operations
in multiple parks.
Suggestion: NatureBridge supports streamlined and standardized
partnership agreements. For example, the National Park Service should
consider ``proven partner status'' for longtime partners that have a
strong mission alignment and have met their program and financial
obligations for a number of years. This would involve setting up a
vetting system for new partners and enabling them to use streamlined
processes once certain conditions are met and a proven track record is
established.
2. Inconsistency of Policies Across Parks
In four different parks, NatureBridge helps the NPS implement its
educational mission. Our educational programs are the same in each
location, but NPS administration varies significantly from park to
park. For example, at Olympic National Park, private bidding and
private construction were allowed on a project funded by NatureBridge
and located on our Institute's campus. At Yosemite National Park, great
uncertainty surrounds whether private bidding and construction will be
allowed for the new Environmental Education Center, which has important
cost implications.
Another example has to do with park facilities assigned to us so
that we can provide the educational programs that the parks have
requested. In Olympic National Park, Santa Monica Mountains National
Recreation Area and Yosemite National Park there is a strong
partnership relationship. Unfortunately, the Golden Gate National
Recreation Area, as mentioned above, apparently sees us as a tenant and
wants to charge rent.
As we make plans to expand our programs to new parks, it will save
countless hours and money if there is a more standardized approach to
the manner in which partnerships are established and administered.
Suggestion: For partners who operate in multiple parks, NPS should
standardize its administrative requirements and employ a more uniform
approach to working with partners.
3. Cultural Challenges
The cultural differences between government and nonprofits are
often a barrier to effective partnerships. Understanding this is a key
for both the NPS and their nonprofit partners. We recommend that a
central part of the NPS partnership training be on the differences in
how nonprofits and how government agencies operate, and how to bridge
the gap. NatureBridge would gladly participate in this type of
training.
Suggestion: Include and engage nonprofit partners in operational
leadership (multi-level) training opportunities, and already existing
National Park Service training. This type of collaborative training
will greatly benefit both the nonprofit partners and the National Park
Service.
4. Decision Making
Decisions must be made more quickly. This mainly has to do with the
layering of agreements and multiple written approvals that are time-
consuming, cumbersome and difficult to manage and enforce. Often it
seems the delays come from divisions within a particular park's
management. These kinds of delays are costly, frustrating and can
inhibit timely implementation and execution of partnership agreements
as well as program and fundraising activities.
Suggestion: Approval processes should be streamlined to fit the
pace of business in the 21st century. This will improve mission-related
results for both partners and will save both donor and taxpayer money.
5. Sharing Information/Changes in Rules
The complexity of the rules/regulations that we operate under in
the national parks makes it difficult to stay abreast of changes in the
rules.
Suggestion: In order to facilitate compliance on the part of
NatureBridge and other partners, NPS should consider a system of alerts
and better communication to assure timely notification of changing
requirements.
We welcome the opportunity to work with the Subcommittee to find
ways to build and foster more effective partnerships while honoring and
enhancing the mission of both of our organizations.
______
Mr. Grijalva. Before we go to our next panelist, let me ask
my colleague, Mr. Holt, if he has any comments?
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE RUSH D. HOLT, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY
Mr. Holt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the panel
for their good testimony, which I am beginning to go through
right now.
This is a very important hearing, and I thank the Chairman
for putting this together. Partnerships with the parks and the
other agencies that look after our public treasures are really
important, and for example, some of us have been promoting an
educational partnership with the national parks. But I hasten
to state my personal concern that over the real decades now a
number of functions that I think should be core functions of
these agencies have been shed to other for-profit and nonprofit
organizations, and I think it is really important that we take
a good look at this and make sure that we provide the resources
to the Park Service and other agencies so that they can fully
undertake those things that should be the core functions, and
not have to go around hat in hand and tin cup rattling to do
those things.
Thank you very much for doing this Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you, Mr. Holt. And Mr. Sarbanes, any
opening?
Let me now go to Dan Puskar, Director of Government
Affairs, National Park Foundation. Welcome. I look forward to
your comments.
STATEMENT OF DAN PUSKAR, DIRECTOR OF PARTNERSHIPS AND
GOVERNMENT RELATIONS, NATIONAL PARK FOUNDATION, WASHINGTON,
D.C.
Mr. Puskar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member,
Members of the Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to
discuss with you the role and value of partnerships in our
national parks.
The National Park Foundation is proud to serve as the
Congressionally established charitable and promotional partner
of the National Park Service. We strive to benefit and add
value to all 392 national parks. Over the past five years, the
Foundation has provided over $124 million to the National Park
System. We receive no Federal appropriations. Instead finding
these resources from individuals, foundations, and
corporations.
In my testimony, I hope to highlight how the Foundation
does three things:
First, how we collaborate with the National Park Service to
ensure that our work directly addresses its critical needs and
individual park priorities. Second, how we help the Service
fulfill our shared mission by providing the expertise,
resources, qualities that a government agency cannot; and
third, how we support friends groups and the philanthropic work
at individual national parks.
The Foundation is honored to continue the rich tradition in
which parks were established and sustained--public and private
interests working in tandem. The Foundation's activities
benefit from our close collaboration with all levels of the
National Park Service. We are privileged to have the Director
as an ex-officio member of our Board of Directors. Our
collaboration extends from the creation of a superintendent's
council that facilitates dialogue and the sharing of ideas
between the Foundation and the Park Service field, to weekly
meetings that I have between myself and the chief of the
National Partnership Office.
Because of our shared mission, the Service has called on
the Foundation to address its critical needs. In 2007, we were
asked to take the lead in the fundraising campaign to build the
Flight 93 National Memorial. Within the past fiscal year of the
$17 million raised that Mr. Shuster mentioned, we transferred
$10.2 million to the Service just in the last fiscal year to
complete this construction project.
Our common mission and close relationship has allowed us to
create grant programs and encourage the Service to help us find
what we can do with the funds that we provide, where they can
be leveraged most succinctly. Consider our America's Best Idea
Grant Program. Here the Foundation has invested almost $900,000
in the last year and a half in 52 national parks to help them
reach underserved group and empower those groups to create
strong, lasting bonds of stewardship.
The Foundation does not define for the parks what an
underserved group is or the best mechanism to reach them. We
rely on that knowledge base there where we can provide a
certain level of fundraising expertise in other areas.
In addition, the Foundation managers select national
programs of significance, programs that fit our role as the
national charitable and promotional arm of the Service. Our
Electronic Field Trips give students an opportunity to
virtually visit national parks they may never be able to do so
on their own. Since 2004, we have participated in 11 of these
field trips. And our last one to Bryce Canyon earlier this
year, 6,000 teachers registered to allow their 120,000 students
to participate on the day of broadcast here in the U.S. and on
military bases in six nations. There was a potential additional
bureauship of 7.5 million viewers by working with Public
Broadcasting and other educational networks.
In each of these examples the Foundation has brought its
fundraising and marketing expertise to complement the Park
Service's deep understanding of their local communities, their
resources, their needs.
The Foundation has also been tasked by Congress to play a
vital nurturing role in strengthening the philanthropic
programs of support at an individual park unit level. The
Foundation recognizes that bolstering sustainable friends'
groups is the key to successfully answering this charge. When
friends groups have the capacity to promote and publicize their
parks, when they can serve as the liaisons between parks and
communities, when they can raise monies for park-specific
programs, the benefits are multi-dimensional and they extend
well beyond the parks' boundaries.
In a survey of friends groups that we conducted in April of
this year, 41 percent reported, however, that their operating
budgets were less than $50,000. Fifty percent reported having
fewer than one paid staff member. More than half of those
polled, over 110 groups responded, stated that advanced
training, fundraising, and board development would
significantly help them to respond to these concerns.
The Foundation is launching an in-depth assistance program
that will help friends group become more effective and
sustainable. This pilot program will conduct on-site
engagements with friends groups across the nation. We will work
with them to do an organizational assessment, find a work plan
that suits their organization's growth, mentor, coach them, and
provide matching funds along the way to ensure that they can
build their own capacity.
The state of our parks as the centennial comes in 2016 will
say a lot about our priorities as a nation. Philanthropy is
critical to creating new opportunities so that the public can
relate to their parks and we can generate the creativity and
innovation that the National Park Service will need in the next
century.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, and Members of
the Committee for your ongoing support of the national parks
and for allowing me the opportunity to report on the important
role philanthropy plays in supporting our shared mission.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Puskar follows:]
Statement of Dan Puskar, Director of Partnerships and
Government Relations, National Park Foundation
Mr. Chairman and Members of the committee, thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you today. The National Park Foundation
(``Foundation'') is proud to be the Congressionally chartered
charitable partner of the National Park Service (PL 90-209) and
commends this committee for its commitment to prepare our national
parks for the challenges and opportunities of the next century and for
highlighting the role that partnerships will play in this future.
The Foundation serves as the philanthropic and promotional arm of
the national park system, much like friends groups service individual
parks or park groups. Through its grant-making programs and public
outreach, the Foundation works with National Park Service leadership in
Washington, D.C. and in parks across the country to fund conservation
and restoration efforts, foster stewardship, engage youth, promote
citizenship and preserve history in the places where it happened. The
Foundation helps the Park Service to fulfill its mission to connect the
American people to their parks in ways that a government agency cannot.
Unlike other Congressionally chartered nonprofits established to
support land management agencies, the Foundation receives no federal
appropriations.
In my testimony, I will highlight how the Foundation collaborates
with the National Park Service at all levels to ensure that its grant-
making directly addresses park priorities. We embrace an
entrepreneurial spirit that allows us to pilot projects and ideas that
may provide innovative solutions to the challenges of connecting youth
and underserved audiences to our parks. Inevitably, we have experienced
successes and failures, and continue to learn how to improve our
partnership and our practices.
PHILANTHROPY IN THE NATIONAL PARKS
Since Yellowstone National Park was established in 1872, private
philanthropy has been at the core of the preservation, protection, and
improvement of America's national parks, and will continue to be
essential in securing their future.
Private philanthropy helped create individual national parks, as
well as the National Park Service itself. The earliest philanthropic
acts spanned the country from California to Maine. In 1907, Mr. and
Mrs. William Kent donated what became Muir Woods National Monument in
California. In June 1916, a group of private donors donated to the
federal government the land for Sieur de Monts National Monument in
Maine, the very same land that would one day grow and develop into
Acadia National Park. Stephen Mather himself, the first director of the
National Park Service, contributed from his personal fortune to support
parks and their administration both before and after he led the agency.
In addition to land purchases, Mather enlisted several western
railroads to join him in contributing $48,000 to publish the National
Parks Portfolio, which publicized national parks and helped persuade
Congress to create the National Park Service in 1916.
With the help of friends groups and other nonprofit park partners,
the Foundation has carried on this legacy of private support of our
national parks for over forty years so that they may be preserved and
protected for future generations.
OUR IMPACT
Congress established the Foundation in 1967 to encourage private
philanthropic support for America's national parks. Over the past five
years (FY2005-2009) the Foundation has provided over $89.3 million in
grants and program support and more than $35.5 million in contributed
goods and services to the national park system, a total contribution of
$124.8 million.
The Foundation is authorized to accept and administer ``any gifts,
devises, or bequests, either absolutely or in trust of real or personal
property or any income therefrom or other interest therein for the
benefit of or in connection with, the National Park Service, its
activities, or its services.'' This broad mandate has been used to:
Between FY2005-FY2009, manage an average of $51.9
million restricted net assets for numerous parks and park
initiatives, some of which do not have friends groups.
Establish the Everglades National Park Freshwater
Wetlands Mitigation Trust Fund in 1983 to restore and monitor
the 6,600 acres ``Hole-In-The Donut'' area of the park. The
Foundation has received and distributed $67.4 million since the
inception of this massive restoration project.
Earn interest and increase the impact on restricted
contributions until required by the national park system. For
example, in February 2010, the Foundation received $5.5 million
for the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial. This amount
represents 10% of the total estimated cost of construction and
has been set aside to offset the costs of perpetual maintenance
and preservation of the commemorative work once it is
completed. It is unlikely to have any disbursement for more
than a decade.
Provide technical assistance and cost-effective
financial operations for facilitating philanthropy at national
park units without a friends group.
The Foundation also raises funds for specific grant-making and
programs to strengthen park resources and visitor experiences. In
FY2010, the Foundation awarded grants to 108 parks and National Park
Service offices totaling $2.5 million. This amount does not include
$10.2 million to complete the first phase of construction for the
Flight 93 National Memorial, monies that have been leveraged by $18.5
million from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and $13 million from
federal appropriations.
In its grant-making, the Foundation has found in recent years that
the best ideas for funding truly come from the parks. Recently
established grant-making programs include the following examples:
Through the America's Best Idea grant program, the
Foundation has invested almost $900,000 since 2009 to reach
traditionally underserved groups and empower them to create
strong, lasting bonds of stewardship.
The Impact Grants program has provided over $500,000
in two years to help 62 parks that needed a small amount of
additional funding to strengthen the efforts of a local
partnership or turn an underfunded and innovative idea into a
successful project.
Active Trails! grants promote healthy lifestyles and
recreation on land and water trails while protecting and
enhancing our national parks' trail resources. Volunteers,
community groups, corporate partners, students and educators
get involved with their national parks through hands-on trail
work, citizen science and learning activities.
In each of these grant-making opportunities, the Foundation
encourages individual parks to define precisely what the grant will
fund and how it will make a difference for the park and the American
public. Grantees are encouraged to use this seed money from the
Foundation to leverage other monies or contributed services from other
partners thus extending their reach and impact.
Regarding the America's Best Idea grant program, the Foundation
does not specify what constitutes an ``underserved group.'' Instead,
parks provide unique answers that fit their gateway communities and
stakeholders needs. Consequently, the Foundation is able to fund a
diverse array of meaningful projects. For example, in 2009 grants
enabled Puebloan youth to spend weeks exploring Bandelier National
Monument's backcountry and educating visitors about their cultural
connection to this northern New Mexico monument. At Salem Maritime
National Historic Site in Massachusetts, Boys and Girls Club members
learned about maritime trade during the 18th and 19th centuries aboard
the wooden boat Friendship. With this grant program, the Foundation and
Park Service leadership look for applicants with projects that are
simultaneously fundable, scalable and innovative. To date, 68 parks
have employed an America's Best Idea grant to give life and legs to new
ideas at the local level.
In addition to its grant-making, the Foundation manages select
national programs of significance. Electronic Field Trips (``EFT''), a
signature program of the Foundation, give students the opportunity to
virtually visit a national park that they might otherwise never get a
chance to visit. An EFT consists of an hour-long broadcast from a
national park featuring rangers and youth hosts--often from a local
school--who focus on subjects relevant to the park. The broadcast is
coupled with a website that offers interactive tools for students and
downloadable lesson plans for their teachers.
Since 2004, the Foundation has participated in EFTs to 11 national
parks including Great Smoky Mountains, Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns,
Hawaii Volcanoes and Grand Teton National Parks. Our next EFT to North
Cascades National Park this October will study the effects of climate
change in parks. Nearly 6,000 teachers registered for the last spring's
EFT to Bryce Canyon National Park reaching 120,000 students in the U.S.
and on military bases in six other nations with a potential additional
7.5 million viewers through the subsequent rebroadcast by Public
Broadcasting Service (PBS) and other educational TV stations.
The Foundation also makes an impact by bringing specialized skills
and technologies to assist the National Park Service in sharing its
story with the American people. The Foundation coordinates with the
National Park Service to promote the entirety of the national park
system through joint awareness campaigns. The Foundation provides
marketing, communications and branding support for events and programs
that recognize the breadth of the system and may be activated in any
park. As an example, for National Park Week 2010, the Foundation
developed a tool kit of posters, banners, informational brochures,
website graphics, social media templates and press releases that could
be customized by individual parks to highlight youth engagement under
the title ``Share A Park, Shape A Life.''
Finally, the Foundation is eager to respond to National Park
Service needs, even those that cannot be anticipated. In response to
the April 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that jeopardized the
wildlife and coastline of 10 national parks, the Foundation and the
National Park Service established a permanent National Parks Disaster
Recovery Fund. In the case of catastrophic wildfires, floods and even
manmade disasters, our two organizations now have a ready vehicle to
help Americans direct their time, talents and monies to restore
national parks marred by tragedy. Where a responsible party is
identified, as with the Gulf oil spill, no funds raised will be used to
mitigate what is rightfully owed to the National Park Service.
PROMOTING LOCAL PARK PHILANTHROPY
In 1998 Congress directed the Foundation to design a program to
foster fundraising at the individual national park unit level (PL 105-
391). In the intervening years, several models have been adopted to
make the most of local community enthusiasm and expertise and the
Foundation's own institutional experience.
The Foundation recognizes that bolstering sustainable friends
groups is the key to successfully answering this charge from Congress.
When friends groups have the capacity to promote and publicize their
parks, serve as liaisons between parks and communities, and raise funds
to support individual park projects, the benefits are multi-dimensional
and extend well beyond park boundaries. Successful friends groups
provide the National Park Service with better resources to fulfill its
mission of preserving parks for future generations. Communities reap
the economic development benefits of public-private partnership and a
vibrant tourism draw. Perhaps most importantly from the Foundation's
perspective, citizens are afforded proactive, tangible and varied ways
to connect with the lands and resources they own in common trust as
Americans.
There is tremendous potential to expand the activities and reach of
friends groups today. In a survey of friends groups by the Foundation
in April 2010, 41% reported operating budgets of less than $50,000 and
50% reported having fewer than one paid staff member. More than half of
those polled stated that advanced training in fundraising and board
development would significantly benefit their organizations. These
results reflect impressive passion for our parks and a desire for
greater guidance.
This year the Foundation is launching an in-depth pilot program to
assist friends groups and help them become more effective and
sustainable. This in-depth model has a proven track record,
particularly within the land trust community, of creating more robust
and efficient organizations that are better able to meet their
missions. The potential also exists to help a national park form a
friends group if there is sufficient community interest.
The pilot program will conduct on-site engagements with friends
groups in each of the seven National Park Service regions for
approximately twelve months per organization. The engagements begin
with an organizational assessment that will consider such areas as
organizational policies and procedures; strategic and program planning
and evaluation; fundraising and resource development; and community
relations and networking. In addition to fulfilling the promise of our
Congressional charter, the Foundation's goal is to steadily increase
the number of sustainable friends groups across the nation, broadening
the landscape and growing the appetite for park philanthropy.
This pilot program builds on previous efforts whereby the
Foundation successfully created new sustainable friends groups for
Biscayne, Crater Lake, Dry Tortugas, Everglades, Glacier, Grand Teton,
Mount Rainier, North Cascades, Olympic and Shenandoah National Parks,
as well as Gateway National Recreation Area, Lake Mead National
Recreation Area, Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, and
the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial.
SETTING PRIORITIES
The Foundation is honored to help continue the rich tradition in
which the parks were established and have been sustained--public and
private interests working in tandem. The Foundation's activities
benefit from our close collaboration and deep, positive relationships
with all levels of the National Park Service - from the park rangers in
the field to the Director himself.
As noted in our charter, the Secretary of the Interior serves as
the ex officio Chairman of the Foundation's Board of Directors and the
Director of the National Park Service serves as its Secretary. In
cooperation with their fellow citizen board members, these officials
direct the activities of the Foundation staff and help set its mission,
budgets, grant-making areas and fundraising goals. The Secretary of the
Interior and the National Park Service Director have always been
invaluable resources to the board as it charts a course for our
organization.
In 1998, the National Park Service and the Foundation jointly
established a Superintendents Council, a platform for open dialogue
between the Foundation and the National Park Service field. The Council
provides a forum to receive critical feedback and advice on its current
and future projects from park managers connected to the lands,
resources and visitors. The Council is composed of two superintendents
from each of the seven National Park Service regions who are nominated
by their regional directors to exemplify the rich diversity of talent
and training found in the national park system. These park managers
constructively evaluate and critique the Foundation's fundraising,
marketing and grant-making programs. This routine engagement helps
ensure that the Foundation's projects support park-level interests and
have the likelihood of on-the-ground success.
Additionally, the Foundation's offices are located in the National
Park Service headquarters building in Washington, D.C. permitting daily
contact between operations and program managers and Foundation staff.
The primary liaisons between our organizations - the Chief of the
National Park Service Office of Partnerships and Philanthropic
Stewardship and the Foundation's Director of Partnerships and
Government Relations - meet weekly to discuss new opportunities, manage
ongoing activities and evaluate projects. This collaborative approach
extends to staff-to-staff communications between Foundation and
National Park Service staff in parks, regional offices and Washington,
D.C.
Recently, the Foundation helped convene National Park Service and
friends group leaders to discuss agreement templates that codify their
partnerships and define fundraising activities. The Foundation has
provided private legal counsel for these discussions, encouraging
solutions that remove limitations to effective and sustainable National
Park Service - friends group partnerships. Like the National Park
Service, the Foundation applauds investments in templates and training
that will streamline the process of establishing and growing these
partnerships.
THE CHARITABLE COMMUNITY FOR PARKS
The National Park Foundation has benefited from the generosity of
many individuals, foundations and corporations.
The Foundation has seen the greatest growth in its individual
giving program in the past five years. In our 2010 fiscal year, the
Foundation received donations from over 52,000 individuals. A robust
website and a new online parks community have expanded our ability to
attract donors in addition to an active direct mail program. In 2006,
the Foundation established a major gift program to energize and retain
individual donors who want to help connect the American people to their
national parks. The Foundation benefits from the significant outreach
of its Board of Directors, composed of leading philanthropists,
business leaders and nonprofit directors.
Throughout its history, the Foundation has also worked with many
significant corporate and foundation partners. Their support has
enabled the National Park Service to enhance and expand important
programs in such areas as education, preservation, community
engagement, health and wellness, habitat restoration and volunteerism.
As noted in the 2009 GAO report commissioned by the Subcommittee
for National Parks, Forests and Public lands and titled Donations and
Related Partnerships Benefit Parks, but Management Refinements Could
Better Target Risks and Enhance Accountability, the Foundation employs
several models for corporate partnerships. The Foundation continues to
pursue long-term relationships with existing and new corporations in a
way that provides greater cash resources and minimizes Park Service
risk.
With the support of the National Park Service, the Foundation is
currently phasing out one specific model for corporate partnership.
Launched in 2000, the ``Proud Partners of America's National Parks''
program permitted corporations to commit certain donations, primarily
in-kind services, by entering into a tri-party agreement with the
Foundation and the Park Service. In return, the corporations were
designated as Proud Partners, permitted to affiliate themselves with
the National Park Service and the Foundation in promotional materials
and granted national marketing exclusivity. To ensure marketing
exclusivity, the National Park Service agreed to abstain from entering
into any other nationwide advertising agreements with companies that
sell the same product or service as the Proud Partner.
Although this program has reaped significant benefits for the
parks, its marketing exclusivity requirements prohibited the Foundation
from soliciting new corporate donors for significant periods of time.
Where the Foundation and National Park Service had five Proud Partners
in 2006, only one, Coca-Cola, is active today. The Foundation and the
National Park Service have learned that a robust fundraising program
that connects the parks and corporate partners is possible under a
different model.
A new model of successful corporate partnership is one with Macy's,
Inc. From 2008 to 2010, the Turn Over A New Leaf campaign was designed
to support, educate and inspire sustainability and eco-friendly
practices in everyday life, as well as raise substantial support for
the Foundation and its programs. Macy's has raised over $6.4 million in
unrestricted funds for the Foundation in three years. The partnership
was formalized in a two-party agreement with the Foundation that
provided for limited marketing exclusivity (i.e. 4-6 months) with the
Foundation but not the Park Service, and leveraged a substantial
corporate marketing budget to generate national awareness.
Partnerships like Macy's benefit the National Park Service and the
Foundation through both the funds they provide and information in
advertisements, which promotes public engagement with national parks.
This model minimizes the appearance of commercialization within
national parks by having corporations affiliate with the Foundation
rather than directly with the National Park Service.
CONCLUSION
The state of our parks at the Centennial Celebration in 2016 will
say a lot about our priorities as a nation. Opportunities for
philanthropy must be central to the future of our national parks. The
Foundation is confident this can be accomplished in a manner that
allows our local partners to be successful and helps programs at the
national level extend the benefits of philanthropy to all parks.
Philanthropy is critical to create new opportunities for more of the
public to relate to their parks and to generate the creativity and
innovation the National Park Service will need in the coming century.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your ongoing support of national parks
and for allowing me the opportunity to report on the important role
philanthropy plays in supporting the noble mission of the National Park
Service and in connecting all Americans to these very special places.
______
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. Mr. Derrick Crandall, Counselor,
National Park Hospitality Association. Welcome, sir.
STATEMENT OF DERRICK A. CRANDALL, COUNSELOR, NATIONAL PARK
HOSPITALITY ASSOCIATION, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mr. Crandall. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and distinguished
members. I am delighted to be here representing the National
Park Hospitality Association, one of the longest partnerships
that the Park Service has had, stretching back more than 125
years. Concessioners now operate in some 160 national parks,
providing a billion dollars in goods and services to nearly 100
million visitors to the parks every year, generating some $70
million payments through franchise fees, and doing far more.
Our guest donation programs in 13 national parks in cooperation
with the National Park Foundation have generated more than $1.1
million over the last five years, including more than $300,000
in just the year concluding in June of 2010.
We look forward to doing much more in terms of partnerships
in the second century of the National Park Service, and we
would like to talk about several of the key issues of concern
to concessioners.
First of all, we would note that park visitation by
Americans is lower today than several decades ago even as our
population has increased by 25 percent. We believe there are
many units of the National Park System which offer wonderful
experiences, but are highly underutilized and can, in fact,
serve the Nation well while also protecting the resources.
We believe that concessioners can be an effective partner
in calling these parks to the attention of the American public
and building the infrastructure needed to satisfy visits. I
would note that park-appropriate, LEED-certified ADA-compliant
and architectural significant park structures need to keep up
with the growth in population of the United States.
Earlier this year, Ken Burns, who produced the PBS series
``America's Best Ideas,'' honored Stephen Mather, the first
Director of the Park Service, for his unique role as a
promoter, and pointed out that many of the roads to and through
our national parks and many of the facilities in our parks were
a result of the same individual that is so often credited with
directing the culture of the Park Service in terms of
protection.
One of his often quoted statement is ``Scenery is a hollow
enjoyment to the tourists who sets out in the morning after an
indigestible breakfast and a fitful night sleep on an
impossible bed.''
We enjoy world-class facilities that are the result of
Stephen Mather and his contemporaries, the El Tovar, the
Ahwahnee, the Many Glacier Hotel land many more.
I would also note that Ken Burns ended his comments by
saying, ``If you think you have a good park, but no one knows
about it, you don't have a good park.''
What I would like to do is address four areas for
partnerships in which concessioners can and should be playing a
major role. The first is to create a new generation of enduring
visitor infrastructure. I mentioned to you before that many of
the lodges, restaurants, and other structures that now exist in
the National Park System and are synonymous with visits to many
of those units date back nearly 100 years ago. It is time to
look at how we can ensure 100 years from now, we have a similar
generation of new grand structures serving the public in 2116.
And in order to do that we believe that we need to look at
several strategies to enhance the building use of the private
sector, including concessioners, to invest in the national
parks.
I note that there has been limited development of new
infrastructure in the national parks over the last 20 years.
Cavallo Point in Golden Gate National Recreation Area is an
exception to that. I would note that Cavallo Point was offered
initially as a concessions contract, and attracted no bidders
from existing concessioners or other major hospitality
entities. It was eventually offered as a commercial lease
because that made it an investment of over $100 million, when
augmented by the money raised by Federal and friends'
organizations, and the possibility of a 50-year lease.
What we would like to do is urge that the Congress consider
a variety of ways both to encourage additional concessioner
investment in infrastructure, and that would be to look at
lengthening the current maximum concessions contract, which is
now normally 10 years, but at a maximum of 20 years, to reflect
the need of recovering that investment and also protecting the
LSI investment, and if the Congress is interested we would be
willing to talk more about the complexities of LSI.
But very quickly, we believe that there are alternatives.
The Chicago lakeside and the investment in marinas under
alternative revenue bonds where those are paid for by the
boaters and other users of the lakeshore are one example;
historic tax credits that could be used to encourage investment
in facilities needed for makeovers, both existing Park Service
properties as well as perhaps facilities that come to the Park
Service through military base reuse strategies. We think that
the President's suggestion of an infrastructure bank for
surface transportation may have applicability to the national
parks and would be willing to talk about that.
We also think that the Park Service, like Agriculture and
Transportation, would benefit immensely from a multi-year
program and an appropriations process to allow the kinds of
thinking by both partners and the Park Service in needed
infrastructure.
Finally, we urge the Congress now, after more than 12
years, to look at the implementation of the 1998 Concessions
Act.
Mr. Chairman, we are proud of the job that concessioners
have been playing. We think we can, in fact, help the Nation
continue to have a close and beloved relationship with their
national parks, and look forward to working with the
Subcommittee.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Crandall follows:]
Statement of Derrick A. Crandall, Counselor,
National Park Hospitality Association
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, my name is Derrick
Crandall and I am delighted to appear as a representative of the
National Park Hospitality Association (NPHA) to discuss the future of
the National Park System and, in particular, the role of increased
partnerships with the National Park Service (NPS) to protect parks,
promote park visitation and provide outstanding services and
experiences for the millions of people who visit units of the National
Park System each year.
Concessioners are proud of the important role they play in helping
people enjoy parks. Visitors come to the national parks to be inspired
by the beauty of the parks while relaxing, recreating, learning, and
having a good time with family and friends. What we do as concessioners
has a great deal to do with the overall experience when they visit the
park. We're an integral part of the national park experience and an
important element in helping the NPS meet its mission. We are working
hard at demonstrating best practices in environmental management, and
are ISO-certified in many parks. We are active in offering healthy,
sustainable foods to park visitors. We are true partners with the
National Park Service.
Concessioners have served park visitors since the 1870's and today
serve some 100 million park visitors annually in approximately 160 park
units. NPHA members have a combined workforce of nearly 25,000 persons
- mostly front-line, visitor-contact jobs - and provide in excess of $1
billion in goods and services to visitors annually. Franchise fee
payments to NPS generated from the approximately 600 concessions
contracts exceed $70 million annually, or about the combined sum raised
annually by the National Park Foundation and members of the Friends
Alliance. And concessioners do far more than generate franchise fees.
Our Guest Contribution programs operate in partnership with local
friends organizations and the National Park Foundation. The NPF-
associated programs alone, in 13 parks, have generated $1.1 million for
deserving park projects since 2006, including more than $300,000 in the
year ending June 30, 2010. Concessioner marketing and park promotion
efforts exceed $10 million annually, and are coordinated with the
marketing and promotion efforts of state and gateway communities that
equal that amount. Concessioners are leading efforts to find ways to
focus promotion on the National Park System and those Americans unaware
of the great benefits available through time in our parks rather than
on specific parks and services and traditional park visitors. Most
importantly, concessioners are committed to meeting America's needs -
needs for healthier lifestyles, for better and lifelong educational
opportunities, for strong local and regional economies that can sustain
and protect our parks, and for connecting all Americans to our parks
across differences in regions, ages, income and ethnicity.
Concessioners are concerned that park visitation by Americans is
lower today than several decades ago - even as our population has grown
by 25%. While visitation to showcase parks remains stable, many other
units of the National Park System offer wonderful experiences but are
highly underutilized. In many cases, these less-visited, high-potential
parks have limited visitor services, and this is an area we urge the
Congress to examine. Some have argued that in today's complex, fast-
paced world, even if we build new facilities in these park units,
people might not come. We can tell you that the evidence seems
conclusive: if we don't provide park lodging, restaurants and more,
people won't come and the relevancy of parks to our society is
threatened. As we look at partnerships and parks, we suggest that
concessioners can and should be prime partners in building a new
generation of park-appropriate, LEED-certified, ADA-compliant and
architecturally significant park structures. And concessioners can be
equally prime partners in outreach and promotion - promoting not just
increased park visitation but targeting especially use of the many
under-visited and underutilized units of the park system.
At a hearing on national parks earlier this year, Ken Burns,
producer of the ``America's Best Idea'' series about national parks,
praised the National Park Service's first Director, Stephen Mather, as
a premier promoter and for working actively with railroads and others
to build roads to and through parks and to build visitor facilities
ranging from lodges to restaurants in the expanding National Park
System. Mather's motive is clear from his oft-quoted statement:
``Scenery is a hollow enjoyment to the tourist who sets out in the
morning after an indigestible breakfast and a fitful night's sleep on
an impossible bed.'' We enjoy the legacy of Stephen Mather today in the
world-class facilities concessioners operate: El Tovar, Ahwahnee, Many
Glacier Hotel and more. Ken Burns concluded his testimony by saying,
``If you think you have a good park but no one knows about it, you
don't have a good park.''
Promoting national park visitation is important for many reasons.
Not only is it good for jobs, but it also reconnects people to nature,
provides them with an opportunity to be physically active, promotes
learning, and strengthens families. Today we live in a world that is
filled with distractions - a world where we can connect with
information and communicate with people almost instantaneously.
Unfortunately, these alternatives seem to increase the extent to which
people become disconnected from nature and focused on virtual
connections to places and to people. A recent study by the Kaiser
Family Foundation indicated that the average American youth spends 7.5
hours a day focused on a screen of some sort. No wonder that so many of
the nation's youth are obese and at risk of Type II diabetes.
The National Park Service and its partners - including
concessioners - need to undertake new outreach and marketing efforts.
The efforts would not be based on advertising - as if we were selling a
car or a theme park. But the efforts should include outreach to schools
and to families with children and greatly improved information on the
internet. In fact, Secretary Salazar undertook a major outreach and
marketing effort last year - which he is repeating again this year -
creating fee-free periods at national parks.
Mr. Chairman, we urge the Congress to act on several important
opportunities to assure that the parks are able to remain relevant and
loved over the next hundred years.
New, Enduring Visitor Infrastructure
We urge you to help in the creation of new park facilities in the
tradition of the grand, enduring structures, many predating the
creation of the National Park Service in 1916, that are synonymous with
the National Park System. Unique architecture and quality construction
mark structures like the Ahwahnee and El Tovar Hotels, lodges in
Glacier and Yellowstone and many more historic structures that help
make 21st Century park visits lifelong memories. Yet not all visitor
structures in our parks are grand, or even park-appropriate. Many of
those constructed mid-20th century are quite unremarkable, are costly
to operate, and produce inferior visitor experiences. These structures
fail to meet expectations of the Congress, the agency, concessioners,
and the public that our parks should serve as outstanding examples of
design in harmony with nature.
We believe that one of the greatest opportunities associated with
the upcoming 100th anniversary of the National Park Service can and
should be a limited number of new structures that, even in 2116, will
still demonstrate national park-appropriate design and operations. This
would mean quality design and materials that meet LEED and ADA design
requirements. The resulting structures would minimize barriers to
serving all Americans well while also achieving agency-espoused goals
in energy efficiency, reduced water use, and other environmental
objectives.
The National Park Service has undertaken some important planning in
this area, although much of the planning has focused on buildings that
would be constructed with appropriated funds and used for visitor
centers, offices and more. This base of knowledge, though, could be
united with the knowledge of concessioners operating in the park and
other companies to achieve truly outstanding results.
New strategies to encourage non-federal capital investment in park
visitor services and facilities are needed. Very few of the facilities
now operated by concessioners were built with appropriated federal
funds, and there is no reason to begin doing so now as the National
Park Service approaches its 100th anniversary. Yet invitations to build
new park facilities have been rare - certainly not enough to support a
growth in capacity equal to population growth. And where new facilities
have been added, like Cavallo Point in Golden Gate NRA, it has often
been done as an exception to usual practices. It is noteworthy that the
reuse of Fort Baker as a world-class conference center was initially
proposed as a concessions contract. After careful study, all major
current concessioners and other leading hospitality companies declined
to offer qualifying bids. Fortunately, the combined vision and energies
of GGNRA's NPS leadership and friends organization found an alternative
course - a commercial lease which, ironically, could only be offered
after concluding that there was no necessary visitor service to be
provided at the location.
The creation of the Lodge at the Golden Gate was financially viable
only through a 50-year lease, through an approach to regulation of
pricing of rooms and food radically at variance from the approach used
by NPS with concessioners, and with an infusion of supplemental federal
and Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy-raised capital. Contrast
that approach with the NPS standard of a 10-year concessions contract
and a concerted - and we think misguided - effort to expunge
concessioner capital investments and limit clearly legal credit to
concessioners for investments, as is being proposed in the now-pending
concessions contract for Signal Mountain Lodge and related facilities
in Grand Teton National Park. The decision to choose an alternative
treatment of Leasehold Surrender Interest (LSI) under this contract is
likely to decrease payments to the National Park Service by $3 million
over 10 years, payments which are vital to facility maintenance and,
because of the reduction, exacerbating the NPS serious deferred
maintenance problem.
We urge the Congress to redirect NPS efforts and we offer several
additional ideas for accessing private capital for beautiful, state-of-
the-art, and enduring visitor facilities for the next century of park
operations - structures that will be as beloved by the national park
community in 2116 as the Ahwahnee is today.
First, concessioners remain willing and able to invest in new
visitor facilities, major renovations of existing facilities and
conversions of buildings to new uses - especially as opportunities may
arise at new park units. To do so, a minimum concessions contract of 20
years is needed, possible under law, but a longer contract more
comparable to that used at Cavallo Point or for ski areas in national
forests would make this more viable. And concessioners need the
protection of LSI provisions under the 1998 concessions act to make
this investment economic.
Second, Congress and NPS should look closely at the dramatic
rejuvenation of the Chicago lakeshore by the Chicago Park District
(CPD). Over a decade, some $250 million in investment has dramatically
changed the park infrastructure on the lakeshore. Working in
partnership with a concessioner with expertise in marina operation, the
CPD has rebuilt and expanded nine recreational harbors with revenues
from alternative revenue bonds. The added revenues from these
improvements not only service the debt from the bonds - bonds that have
no recourse to either CPD or the City of Chicago, but only to the
revenue stream from the recreation operations on the lakeshore - but
also provide some $15 million annually in new operating funds for CPD.
And those paying the higher fees - mostly recreational boaters - are
delighted by the improved safety and services. Happily, millions of
other visitors to the lakeshore are also beneficiaries of the
investment - at no cost to them!
Third, NPS owns, and will be offered ownership of, many structures
which, if privately held, would reward qualifying investments with
historic tax credits. We urge the Congress to make investments by
concessioners in these structures eligible for these tax credits.
Noteworthy, after private investors in qualifying historic structures
are rewarded with a 20% tax credit, the private owner then has 100%
equity in the building and may sell the enhanced property for gain.
Were historic credits to be offered to concessioners, ownership of the
improved property would remain with the NPS.
Fourth, the President has proposed a creative approach to
leveraging federal funds in the surface transportation arena that is
worth examining for use in other arenas. Part of his newly announced
and ambitious six-year surface transportation measure, expected to be
outlined fully in his FY2012 budget early next year, is a new
Infrastructure Bank. Using $5 billion in federal funds as a guaranty,
he proposes to raise $50 billion in private funds to be invested in
surface transportation projects. While some of these funds would go
toward toll roads and bridges with revenues, the concept also includes
investment in projects that are strategic public investments. We urge
this committee to look carefully at the concept of an investment bank
applied to needed park infrastructure investments - utilities, lodges,
campgrounds, marinas, transportation systems and more. It may well be
that this new entity could be as vital to the future of the national
parks in the century to come as the National Park Foundation is and
should be.
Fifth, we urge the Congress to understand the immense advantages
accorded to federal agencies with multi-year programs and
appropriations. In transportation, agriculture and other fields, a
multiple-year program empowers the Congress to express clear long-term
goals and priorities, and provides partners - states, local governments
and business - to similarly develop multi-year strategies. The savings
to the involved federal agencies can also be dramatic. The arguments
for multiple-year programs and appropriations for transportation and
agriculture seem applicable to America's park system - especially if a
sustainable source of funding can be identified.
Sixth, the Congress should conduct oversight on the 1998
legislation, which changed concessions practices, to see if the results
are really those intended. The shortening of most contracts, the
elimination of preferential rights on contract renewals and the
substitution of Leasehold Surrender Interest (LSI) for Possessory
Interest (PI) have increased the flow of franchise fee payments to the
National Park Service, but it is not clear that goals of reduced burden
on concessioners and the agency or increased competitiveness are being
achieved. Moreover, there is good evidence that combined with the
restrictions of Directors Order 21, the administration of the act has
discouraged companies acting as concessioners from adopting best
practices in customer service, since guest satisfaction is poorly
monitored and offers no advantages for excellence. This committee needs
to know the hurdles concessioners often face doing the ``right thing.''
Not long ago, the long-time practice of a concessioner here in
Washington to provide free hot chocolate to children attending the
Pageant of Peace on the Ellipse caused a mini-firestorm because
Directors Order 21 prohibits concessioners from contributing directly
to charitable events in parks which they serve.
New Opportunities in Health and Education
We believe that one of the most exciting opportunities for the
national parks in the 21st Century is to recognize the measureable
benefits the park system offers in fields such as education and health,
and to develop sustainable funding responding to these contributions.
There is good precedent. Beginning with ISTEA in 1991, a large share of
park road costs has been shifted from natural resources appropriations
to transportation appropriations.
There is significant and growing evidence that parks are, and can
increasingly be, playing a significant role in reducing the nation's
healthcare costs. The nation now spends $2.7 trillion on healthcare, or
about $8,000 annually per American. Of this cost, an estimated 70% is
for chronic illnesses, which are lifestyle-induced and largely
preventable. Historically, smoking has been the largest single
contributor to these costs. Yet in the 21st Century, there is a new
competitor for the top contributor to chronic illness: physical
inactivity and eating patterns that are at the heart of an obesity
epidemic with resulting illnesses ranging from diabetes to hypertension
and strokes, cancer and depression. A growing army of medical experts
is looking at parks and open space as cost-effective and successful
intervention strategies.
In conjunction with the underway America's Great Outdoors
Initiative, we have teamed up with the Institute at the Golden Gate to
begin the documentation of parks/medical community efforts. In
locations ranging from Albuquerque to Brooklyn, doctors are prescribing
parks. In Arkansas, we discovered that cardiologists had personally
raised more than $1 million for construction and maintenance of an
urban ``Medical Mile,'' offering both opportunities for healthy fun and
information about ``minimum daily requirements'' for physical activity.
Also in Arkansas, we learned that the University of Arkansas has
invested $90,000 in expanding and upgrading a U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers campground because studies show that patients receiving long-
term cancer treatment recover better and faster while staying in a
park-like setting than in a hospital ward, a hotel or other facility -
and at much lower costs. We see major healthcare insurers paying for
park-focused activities for those diagnosed as pre-diabetic as a cost-
effective way to arrest the advance of the disease. We applaud the
partnership of NatureBridge, Olympic National Park, TriWest Healthcare
Alliance and others that is bringing wounded warriors and their
families to that park to heal physical and emotional wounds. And in
California, we have found a healthcare insurer committed to helping its
insureds control healthcare costs with regular screenings and steps as
unusual as treating park entrance fees as reimbursable expenses. These
and other initiatives have been collected as a first round of case
studies on Health and the Great Outdoors in a booklet submitted with
this testimony, and we propose to continue this collection and sharing
of best practices.
In short, we believe that partnerships with medical interests are a
huge opportunity for America's national parks, and one that should be
encouraged and aided by the Congress. Much of this activity can be
attributed to the impact of a recent White House Fellow. Dr. Michael
Suk, an orthopedic trauma surgeon, was selected and somewhat surprised
when he was assigned to spend his fellowship year aiding the Secretary
of the Interior. His seminal work connecting health and parks is now
paying immense dividends and prompts us to recommend the establishment
of a on-going fellowship program placing a doctor in the Office of the
Secretary of the Interior as Special Advisor for Health Programs,
perhaps in conjunction with the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, which
already places 12 fellows annually within the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services.
And we also believe similar partnership opportunities exist in the
educational field. There is a growing body of evidence that
experiential learning in parks achieves better educational outcomes and
is cost-effective. And the educational community is reaching out to the
parks community. Just 30 miles from Capitol Hill, Prince William County
Schools - Virginia's second largest and fastest growing school system -
is moving from pilot to full implementation of ED OUT, an outdoors
learning program that enlists adjunct faculty from federal, state and
non-profit entities and utilizes 16 recreation sites in the county,
ranging from Prince William Forest Park to wildlife refuges. The
program is far more ambitious than a day of outdoor learning, however.
Students - and parents - receive information about summer fun that
relates to the upcoming year's curriculum. Best of all, programs of
this type can actually generate revenue for NPS and other agencies.
Funding Sustainable Outreach and Promotion Efforts
As mentioned earlier, the NPHA believes that the National Park
Service should undertake expanded outreach and marketing efforts -
especially directed to urban Americans, Americans of color, new
Americans, and other portions of the American public with limited
traditions of park visitation. To facilitate this, we offer the
following alternatives.
One option would be to provide the agency with authority to utilize
franchise fees paid by national park concessioners annually to support
NPS outreach and marketing efforts. The NPHA urges committing 10% of
the $70 million in total franchise fees paid, or some $7 million
annually, to a new National Park Outreach and Promotion Fund.
Alternatively, 10% of the receipts from annual sales of the America
the Beautiful Pass could be dedicated to a matching fund to support
park promotion efforts. Purchase of the annual pass - permitting access
to virtually all federal recreation sites for 12 months - should be a
major component of park promotion efforts. Holders of passes can be
reached to communicate opportunities in parks - and because they can
enter any park without paying an entrance fee, they are likely to be
interested in learning more about when and where they can add to their
park experiences.
Current annual park pass sales are very limited, but a new
promotion coalition could boost sales significantly, adding
substantially to the current $175 million in park fees now collected
annually. If these funds could be used on a 50-50 matching basis with
resources from private sources such as non-profit and philanthropic
organizations, concessioners and other private interests, then the NPS
could double its money and greatly expand outreach to minorities and
other underserved communities, young adults, families with children,
and the ever-expanding number of older Americans with grandchildren.
This effort would be good for gateway communities, generating jobs and
added income, and could help to expand interest and awareness among an
entire generation of Americans who, without this promotion, are likely
to remain unaware of this wonderful legacy of national parks. If
successful, this effort could reverse recent trends in park visitation,
and help generate additional income to support the parks and improve
facilities and visitor services.
Institutionalizing Creativity
America's park and conservation community has been blessed with
visionary leadership for more than 150 years - reflected in the world's
first national park, the world's first national forest and national
wildlife refuge systems and more. That vision continues. For many of us
who had the pleasure to work with the late Brian O'Neill, long-time
General Superintendent of Golden Gate National Recreation Area, we saw
firsthand one of the leading contemporary visionaries in our field. We
are enthusiastic about the interest of the Chairman of this
subcommittee in exploring ways to encourage and nurture this visionary
spirit within NPS professionals and partners to the agency. While it
seems like an oxymoron to attempt to institutionalize untraditional
thinking and partnership-based thinking, we believe that it can and
should be done. Our experience with our annual Partners Outdoors
program, an effort drawing some 150 carefully chosen, diverse public
and private sector representatives to look afresh at challenges and
opportunities gives us confidence that the Chairman's objectives can be
met with the right kind of governance and leadership.
Summary
Mr. Chairman and Members, we need to get Americans back in touch
with nature, engaged in physical activities and outdoor recreation, and
connected to the magnificent culture, heritage and landscapes that are
celebrated by our National Park System. We need to reach out to youth
to encourage them to share in the wonder and enjoyment of our national
parks and discourage the increasingly sedentary lifestyles that are
contributing to our healthcare crisis. We need to expand park
visitation to encourage minorities, disadvantaged communities, new
Americans and urban residents to see their national parks for
themselves and to build a broader constituency for America's great
outdoors. We need to find new and innovative ways to reinvest in the
maintenance, restoration, and expansion of critical park infrastructure
- much of which was built either by private investment when the
national parks were first created, or in conjunction with the work of
the Civilian Conservation Corps more than half a century ago. And we
need to take advantage of new opportunities for partnerships in the
health and education arenas.
The National Park Hospitality Association and the national park
concessioners want to help you, the National Park Service, and all
Americans in achieving these objectives. As the 100th Anniversary of
the National Park Service shines a light on America's Best Idea, we
hope you will help us build on our longstanding partnership with the
NPS to find new and innovative ways to improve the parks and create a
new generation of Americans who share in the wonder of this amazing
legacy. We thank you for considering our thoughts and recommendations.
We would be delighted to provide additional information and respond to
any questions you might have.
______
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much.
Let me begin with you, Mr. Crandall. Toward the close of
your statement you brought up how you encourage non-Federal
investment in capital improvements in the parks. Can you expand
on the alternative revenue bond and the historic tax credit
concept that you brought up?
Mr. Crandall. Yes. In Chicago, the entire lakeshore has
been rebuilt with some $250 million worth of alternative
revenue bonds issued by the Chicago Park District, but with no
recourse to either the City of Chicago or its taxpayers. The
recourse on that bond is exclusively from the revenues
generated through leasing of slips to recreational boaters, and
franchise fees paid by restaurants and other commercial
operations along the lakeshore.
The nice thing is that in addition to paying the entire
service on the debt, it generates some $15 million a year to
serve visitors who are paying nothing to enjoy the lakeshore.
It has been a tremendous success.
In terms of historic tax credits, as you know there are
wonderful examples of buildings that have been restored through
what effectively is a 20 percent tax credit to the investors in
those structures. Now normally when a private individual does
that on a private building they then own entirely this tax
advantage property. What we would suggest is there is a logic
to saying that if, in fact, the concessioner or another
interest were to invest in something like the Many Glacier
Hotel, the structure would remain the Park Service's, and so,
therefore, the benefits of the tax credit would truly accrue to
the public and remain with the public as opposed to becoming
something that has value to the private investor.
Mr. Grijalva. OK. Thank you.
Mr. Puskar, give me an idea of how the Foundation
determines which projects you are going to fund and what role
does the Service play in that determination?
Mr. Puskar. The Service plays an integral role in that
determination and in that process. I would look at it in two
ways. One, as I mentioned, the Director of the National Park
Service serves on our Board of Directors. On an annual basis
our board meets to discuss what the fundraising and grant
program goals are going to be each year. He is a part of that
discussion.
Following the GAO report in 2004, we also responded by
working with the Park Service to implement a general agreement
between our organizations that spells out how, as staff
members, we will work together to ensure that we implement
those Board interests. What I can say is that from the
beginning of each grant program, for example, we are involving
the National Park Service Partnership Office, working with the
park leadership. When it comes to handing out our grants,
decisions are not made solely by the Foundation but experts
within the Park Service are used who know best how things will
work on the ground.
Mr. Grijalva. Yes, one of the grant programs that you have
initiated that I think has great potential for addressing some
of the issues that other panelists have brought up about
visitorship, increasing that number, is America's Best Idea
Grants, about a concept of inclusion and bringing more folks
in.
Do you think there is enough oversight and enough
coordination with the Park Service, because this is a central
concept to building up the base of support from a variety of
communities? Is there enough oversight going on in terms of
those grants so that they are indeed doing the attraction and
working to make sure that the parks are becoming more user
friendly to a variety of communities?
Mr. Puskar. I would argue that it is, by its very nature,
entrepreneurial and experimental. In many ways, these grants
serve as seeds for the Park Service to determine, at the local
level, that this is an underserved community that needs our
help. This is the way that community is telling us we may be
better served.
Mr. Grijalva. At what point, and maybe that is something
that we can talk at another time, at what point do you evaluate
if that seed took root?
Mr. Puskar. At the end of each grant period, let us just
say it is handed out in January, by September we are looking
for the monies to be spent, a report given that we can then
work with the Park Service to evaluate.
Mr. Grijalva. OK.
Mr. Puskar. And see if there is something that should grow
more.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much. Mr. Bishop?
Mr. Bishop. Could I just ask each of you if you would be
kind enough to tell me in one sentence, it could be compound
but not run on, what is the purpose of national parks?
Ms. Asbury. I would say it is to connect our nation's
citizenship to the culture and the heritage, and to preserve
and protect those places for generations to come.
Mr. Bishop. OK.
Ms. Smartt. To protect our natural resources, tell the
story of America and provide educational and recreational
opportunities.
Mr. Puskar. To protect the natural wonders of the United
States and the places where history was made.
Mr. Crandall. And I would say to provide the American
public with a shared sense of treasured places that provide
education, fun, and healthy activity.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you all. Mr. Puskar, you provide within
one of your services Electronic Field Trips.
Mr. Puskar. Yes.
Mr. Bishop. Which is exciting. Is there any substantial
definable evidence that kids seeing the Electronic Field Trips
actually attend the parks that they view electronically?
Mr. Puskar. I do not have any data on how many children
that are able to view this would then go onto their parks.
Hopefully between the broadcast and the attendant educational
materials they get a good sense of them and are hopefully
inspired to get to the park closest to them--or to their
backyard at the very least.
Mr. Bishop. And I appreciate that as well. Some of our
resources within the park system, like the mall, for example,
are well visited by people who come to Washington, but they
don't come to Washington to see the mall. It is a secondary
impact. Unfortunately, many of our resources in the park system
are out of the way, which means it has to be a destination
point. So could I once again ask each of you, start with Mr.
Crandall, how your entity makes the parks a destination point?
Mr. Crandall. Well, it provides me with an opportunity to
recall that the Park Service was once the Nation's travel
department and, in fact, promoted--and I submit this for the
record, a series of posters that were prepared during the CCC
days. Today, one of the few organizations pushing for and
promoting, putting onto the radar screen the national parks
would be concessioners, although I would say that promotional
activity is largely focused on the parks in which concessions
currently operate.
Mr. Bishop. Can I also recommend for your idea that if you
really want to get more people attending the parks certain
things be allowed to be found in the parks? Hint. Hint. OK,
fine. Mr. Puskar.
Mr. Puskar. I don't know how to follow that.
I would say two things. One, I think the work that we are
doing with friends groups to ensure that, at a local level,
communities are able to engage with their parks, create friends
groups, and in some ways drive economic development may help
parks get more on a map, which is great. Second, as the
national charitable partner, we look to work with the Park
Service as best we can to make sure that people know that there
are 392 units out there when they may suspect there are 14.
Mr. Bishop. Ms. Smartt.
Ms. Smartt. Our organization works with schools that we
scholarship, and these are typically children that have not
been to a national park. In fact, that is one of the questions
that we ask in working with the schools, to survey the class
not only their science education, but their experience with
national parks. We don't have hard data. It is something we are
looking at, their program evaluation, about what the impact is
long term on these children in terms of their coming back with
their families to the parks, but I think that is a large part
of our effort.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you. Ma'am.
Ms. Asbury. Our organizations, particularly the cooperating
associations, help to provide that intersection of taking the
parks' story and putting them into tangible materials that the
public can purchase or that they can learn about online, and so
that opportunity for sights that are sometimes not commercially
viable, or the big, you know, top 10 or 11 sites get their
story out and people have the opportunity to connect to that.
Also, the education of programs and the activities, such as the
field schools and field institutes and the programs that are
taking place, engage people in the parks that might not
otherwise attend at an early age.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you. I appreciate that. Obviously one of
the issues we have with parks is the visitation. It is
declining, the age of visitors is increasing, and those are two
trends that are not boding well for the future of our park
system. Thank you.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you, sir.
Let me just follow up. Ms. Smartt, in your testimony you
discuss some of the new hoops that you have to jump through to
get an agreement with the National Park Service, and you also
mentioned that these agreements are becoming overreaching and
not workable. Can you give us some specific examples and
discuss how that differs from past experience?
Ms. Smartt. Yes. We have been working on a fundraising
agreement for a new campus in Yosemite National Park. We
started on it in draft in 2008, and were told by the National
Park Service to quit working on it because we hadn't gotten a
record of decision, so we had to quit working on that
agreement, and it would be seen as pre-decisional if you are
raising money for a project that you haven't gotten your record
of decision on. So, we got into this kind of bureaucratic loop
with the Park Service. That is the first time that has ever
happened, and I am not sure what was driving the sensitivity on
the National Park Service side.
We are still in draft. That original 20-page agreement has
now morphed into a 40-page agreement. The clause in it on donor
recognition is in direct conflict with Director's Order 21, so
there are parts of it that don't agree with other legal
documents that the Park Service uses to guide its work. That is
just one small example.
Another example is we built a facility in Olympic National
Park to house our children.
Mr. Grijalva. Can I ask, just to follow up on that example,
would the uniformity point, the template point that Mr. Wenk
was making----
Ms. Smartt. Yes.
Mr. Grijalva.--would that help with----
Ms. Smartt. It would help substantially, yes. Yes. And to
make sure that everything in these agreements are in conformity
with other rules and regulations. There are conflicts. There
has even been a suggestion that they need to see the by-laws of
our organization, so we have had a number of conversations
around agreements that have not been particularly productive.
We have a 40-year partnership with the National Park Service,
and it seems a little odd after 40 years that they are
concerned about our by-laws.
We had operated in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area
for 30 years, and our cooperative agreement came up for
renewal, and they offered us a five-year agreement with the
expectation that we were going to invest in facilities there.
It goes to the heart of what Derrick Crandall was saying. Even
for nonprofits, you cannot invest long term without long-term
agreements. It doesn't make any sense. There are a number of
those kinds of things that are quite different than when we
started operating 25, 30, 40 years ago, depending on the park.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. Ms. Asbury, tell us about the
competitive bidding process that currently exists among
nonprofits that are seeking to operate in the parks. Is this a
common occurrence among organizations that you represent?
Ms. Asbury. It is not now a common occurrence but it is
something that our organizations see quite often creep into
language about the importance of competition, and sometimes in
situations where competition is not necessarily productive. I
will use an example. It started with the Bureau of Land
Management a few years ago when they were kind of the lead
organization for placing all opportunities to work with the
agency on grants.gov. So, examples would be like a cooperating
association that may have had a longstanding relationship with
BLM land, their agreement ended. In the past, it had been open
to automatic renewal if they were doing a good job and being
productive in the partnership. Suddenly those agreements
started showing up on grants.gov, with a suggestion that they
needed to be competed.
So we recognize that there needs to be processes sometimes
when there is a new opportunity to make sure that different
entities have an opportunity to participate. However, when
there are long-term established relationships that are
productive relationships and are working effectively, it is
disruptive to have that feeling of competition necessary to
make things work into the future.
Mr. Grijalva. Ms. Smartt, one last question.
Ms. Smartt. Yes.
Mr. Grijalva. The conflicts and problems that we were
talking about in the last question, are they found at the local
level predominantly or is it a higher level?
Ms. Smartt. Actually, I think what has happened is we feel
like we have been working very well with the local park, and
then it goes to the region for review, and then it comes to
Washington to the solicitor's office for review, and then it
gets into this endless loop between the park and Washington
with more and more layers of legalese and clauses added.
Mr. Grijalva. Got you.
Ms. Smartt. Yes.
Mr. Grijalva. So it is at the higher level?
Ms. Smartt. Yes.
Mr. Grijalva. OK. Thank you very much. Mr. Bishop, any
follow up? Thank you very much, and let me invite the next
panel up.
Thank you very much and let me begin with Ms. Nancy
Chamberlain, Associate Dean, Department of Recreation and
Parks, Northern Virginia Community College. Welcome. I look
forward to your comments.
STATEMENT OF NANCY CHAMBERLAIN, M.S., C.P.R.P., ASSOCIATE DEAN,
DEPARTMENT OF RECREATION AND PARKS, NORTHERN VIRGINIA COMMUNITY
COLLEGE, ANNANDALE, VIRGINIA
Ms. Chamberlain. Thank you, sir. Good morning, Mr.
Chairman, and Members of the Subcommittee.
Thank you for the opportunity to present the key components
of the partnership between the Department of the Interior,
National Park Service-Shenandoah National Park and Northern
Virginia Community College. I am here before you today due to
the dedication of my students and the recreation parks leisure
services program at Northern Virginia Community College.
The successful partnership with the National Park Service-
Shenandoah National Park was born of their efforts to bring the
love of their national parks, forests and public lands to the
lives of youth, primarily school-aged children.
The RPK students, Recreation and Parks, designed a Students
Encouraging Environmental Discovery Program or SEED in 2008 to
address the disconnect between children and the environment.
The SEED goal was to serve children who were both socio-
economically disenfranchised as well as nature disenfranchised.
I want to highlight some of the--there are lots of
successful components of this partnership. Some are most
important, I think, for this Committee's concern. All partners
share a common goal in reaching urban youth and providing
quality, resource-based education. The National Park Service
and the Northern Virginia Community College and our subpartner,
Prince William County Park Authority, had this as a student-
driven partnership. College students cared for and designed
this program.
The National Park Service was receptive to the offer of
partnership. It was designed and driven by academic goals and
service learning objectives. The operational model between the
partners was mutually determined. It was not imposed by either
the goals and objectives of either of the partners in
isolation.
The task agreement allowed the National Park Service-
Shenandoah National Park staff to focus as subject-matter
experts, and allowed the other partners to focus on daily
operations and disciplinary requirements and monitoring within
the program.
I think the most unique feature of the partnership with
Northern Virginia Community College and Prince William County
is that we are programmatic partners. We are not fundraising
partners and we are not research partners.
Neither Northern Virginia Community College nor the Prince
William County Park Authority partners proposed long-term
projects, or projects that required maintenance or service
beyond the actual program period. The Northern Virginia
Community College maintains substantial volumes of equipment
necessary for backpacking, camping, and hiking, and the goal of
this particular partnership was to get youth into camping.
Access to equipment made overnight experiences possible and
reduced the financial risk to the National Park Service-
Shenandoah National Park for equipment.
The National Park Service did design specific programs,
destination subject matters, and demonstrated subject matter
expertise, which was invaluable to the partners of Northern
Virginia Community College-Prince William County Park. They
customized the junior ranger program booklets for us and they
were a fabulous hit. The National Park Service also made video
cameras available to participants so they could document their
experiences, and this was a fabulous mechanism to hold the
attention of the youth. The goal is to use those materials in
historical documentation in future marketing.
There were some challenges as we have all discussed today,
some bureaucratic requirements that were time-consuming and
took our attention away from programming. The cooperative
agreements, task agreements and memorandums of understanding
needed to have been in place in January in order for us to
implement mid-June operations.
Funding notification needed to have come no later than the
31st of January in order to implement June operations. The
cooperative agreement process between the National Park Service
and Northern Virginia Community College admitting mutual
constraints was time-consuming and somewhere between three and
four months.
Time delays affected programming, compromised contracting
periods, employee and volunteer screening schedules and
marketing demands for the program. The time to negotiate
cooperative agreements between the National Park Service and
NOVA was in stark contrast to our time it took Northern
Virginia Community College to negotiate a memorandum of
understanding between Prince William County Park and the
community college.
The date of funding notification in March of 2009, in
combination with the final agreement, was too late to deliver
the program as originally structured. We went from a six-week
program format down to a two-week program format. The date of
funding came most too late for the marketing programs and the
hard marketing materials for summer programs. Typically that is
issued in mid-February. It proves to be difficult to celebrate
partnerships with the National Park Service imprinted in static
marketing materials in advance of funding notification or
clarifications of the task agreements.
As all of us have said, some of the effect of the changes
in the partnership and the centralization of agreements seems
to have been in response to a set of unknowns. What did the
cooperative task agreement look like? What did the
documentation look like? And what were the methods for
distributing grant monies?
The accomplishments were many--too many to highlight in our
time period. The success of the partnerships was evidenced by
the children completing the Junior Ranger Program and Leave No
Trace Awareness Program that created constituencies between the
parks, the National Park Service, and the families. Children
have returned to the national parks since the end of this
program. Children visited at least four programs in the
national parks, and met park rangers. A multitude of high-risk
youth were profiled and served--culturally diverse children
with documented cognitive disabilities. The parents reported
great things. My favorite was, ``My child was allergic to
effort, but she can't stop talking about hiking and climbing.''
``My child was afraid to sleep in a tent but now wants her very
own.''
Program diversity was achieved because the National Park
Service was flexible enough to let us visit one and two-night
short experiences. The program served as the first experience
in a national park for 80 percent of the children and the first
time they had participated in a park program delivered by a
park ranger. And 100 percent of the participants gave up their
cell phones and electronic devices to play in the national
park, and forgot to ask for their equipment when they went
home. We thought that was great.
The methodology for project determination from our agency
is just that it meets our institutional capacity and curriculum
goals, and that the principal and county park as a partner are
prioritizing their Fiscal Year 2011 budgets for anything that
has to do with environmental awareness or education.
Recommendations: Refine partner types. There didn't seem to
be a place for us----
Mr. Grijalva. We are going to have to ask you to go a
little faster on the recommendations.
Ms. Chamberlain. That is fine. There was no place for us as
program partners. We need some outlines on how to do that. What
does the National Park Service need? Give us a list. Maybe we
can get help from the academic community where it is not
research-based. Expand questionnaires and qualifications. Make
a checklist for who is an appropriate program partner and how
that is devised. Share training with us as it has been spoken
about before. We would be willing to serve as training
facilities for the National Park Service in the local regions,
and encourage National Park Service to reach out to colleges
and institutions programmatically because there is an
educational service learning modality issue and goal in the
colleges and communities.
Mr. Grijalva. OK, thank you.
Ms. Chamberlain. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Chamberlain follows:]
Statement of Nancy A. Chamberlain, M.S., C.P.R.P., Associate Professor/
Assistant Dean, Recreation, Parks & Leisure Studies, Northern Virginia
Community College, Annandale, Virginia
Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to present the key components of the partnership by and
between the Department of the Interior, National Park Service, and
Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) and Prince William County
Park Authority (sub-partner).
Overview:
I am before you today due to the dedication of my students, in the
Recreation, Parks & Leisure Studies (RPK) at Northern Virginia
Community College (NOVA). The successful partnership with Shenandoah
National Park and the National Park Service is borne of their efforts
to bring our love of the national parks, forests and public lands to
the lives of youth.
The RPK Program is the only two year Associate of Science program
in the Virginia Community College System in the Commonwealth of
Virginia. Faculty and students in this program are uniquely dedicated,
as are other academicians and students across the United States, to the
study of environmental education, recreation, stewardship and
sustainability in parks, forests and public lands.
The RPK students designed the ``Students Encouraging Environmental
Discovery'' (S.E.E.D.) program in 2008 to address the disconnect
between children and the environment in keeping with H.R. 3036: No
Child Left Inside Act of 2008. Students were also touched by the
publication of Richard Louv, ``Last Child in the Woods''.
In a culminating academic assignment they were tasked to design a
program that would address the lack of outdoor experiential learning
opportunities for children. As a result since spring 2009, the S.E.E.D.
program has delivered after-school programs in Fairfax County,
Virginia's, School Age Child Care (SACC) centers along the Route 1
corridor. RPK worked with Theresa Jefferson at the Bureau of Land
Management (BLM), Lorton, Virginia office to deliver these after school
programs to build on existing BLM programs in the local school
district.
The S.E.E.D. goal is to serve youth who were both socio-
economically disenfranchised as well as youth who were nature
disenfranchised. Youth without quality access to parks, environmental
education, outdoor discovery and stewardship opportunities were
determined to be at risk by the S.E.E.D. program guidelines. The summer
camp program ``Camp S.E.E.D.'' was an outcome of the after school
program allowing the RPK program to continue its outreach to youth year
round.
My testimony will focus on six core areas today:
1) Components of Successful Partnership
2) Challenges in Partnership
3) The effect of National Park Service policy on partnership
4) Accomplishments of and benefits to the National Park
Service, Shenandoah National Park, Northern Virginia Community
College and Prince William County Park Authority by virtue of
partnership
5) Review methodology for project determination
6) Recommendations for future program partnerships
1. Components of Successful Partnership
a) All partners shared the common goal in reaching urban youth
and providing quality resource based education.
b) The NPS/NOVA partnership was a Recreation, Parks & Leisure
Studies student driven partnership. Shenandoah National Park
was receptive to the offer of partnership. Partnership with NPS
was driven by academic and service learning goals of RPK
program.
c) The operational model between the partners was mutually
determined and not imposed by the goals and objectives of
either partnership in isolation.
d) Division of responsibilities outlined clearly in the Task
Agreement which allowed the Shenandoah National Park staff to
focus on subject matter expertise across multiple disciplines
while NOVA and Prince William Park Authority staff provided
daily operations and disciplinary requirements of the program.
e) There were substantial and unique contributions made by all
partners which truly supported the cooperative agreement.
f) Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) and their sub-
partner, Prince William County Park Authority, are unique
partners. These agencies are programmatic partners not fund
raising partners.
g) NOVA and Prince William County Park Authority have their
own infrastructure to deliver similar projects, marketing, web
support, equipment, staff, registration capabilities, and
therefore did not place financial burdens on the NPS partner.
h) Each partner had different federal, state and municipal
guidelines and accepted tasks and responsibilities based on
bureaucratic capabilities rather than focus on restriction.
i) Neither the NOVA or Prince William County Park Authority
partners proposed long term projects nor programs that required
maintenance or service by any partner beyond the program
period. NOVA contributed equipment and materials necessary for
the program and makes this type of equipment available to this
and other programs throughout the year. NOVA uses this
equipment throughout the remainder of the year to meet
educational objectives. The nature of the finite program design
reduced financial risk for all partners.
j) NOVA Office of Grants Development could draw on past
experience with the task agreement documents and grants forms
from partnership with the Manassas Battlefield.
k) Professionals in partner agencies had unique and
unduplicated skills which contributed to the substantial and
diverse offerings within the program and stood as a testament
to cooperation.
l) NOVA's Recreation, Parks & Leisure Studies program
maintains a substantial volume of equipment necessary for a
backpacking, camping, and hiking programs. Access to equipment
made the overnight experience possible. Financial risk for
equipment was transferred from the park to the program partner.
The sub-partner, Prince William County Partner has a similar
challenge with respect to gear to facilitate overnight
experiences. Having camping gear available to families made the
cost of enrolling their child in the program more cost
effective. Lack of access to gear would have been a barrier to
both programming and participation.
m) Grant funding from NPS partner made programming available
off site from partner's agency location. New geography and new
experiences for staff and participants were afforded.
n) Grant funding from NPS partner made intense day-long ranger
programs available.
o) NPS partner had developed new programs that integrated
technology with resource investigations using hand-held GPS
units not available to NOVA or Prince William County Park
Authority partners. NPS staff served as subject matter experts
and trained staff and participants with GPS units.
p) NPS partner designed programs specific to the destination
demonstrating subject matter expertise which was invaluable to
the partners. The customized Junior Ranger programs booklets
were a great hit with participants.
q) NPS partner made Flip-Video cameras available to the
participants so they could document their experiences at the
park and throughout the week at other NPS locations. This was a
fabulous mechanism to hold the participants attention and gave
them ownership in an end product. The goal is to use these
videos to create marketing materials and historical
documentation of program success.
r) The NPS partner had radio communication in the park thus
affording emergency communication. Cell phones were
insufficient methods of communication in park due to
connectivity challenges. Radio communication was a substantial
part of the Emergency Action Planning for the partners when
taking children into the wilderness.
2) Challenges in Partnership
a) Legal/bureaucratic requirements were very time consuming
and took away from program development.
b) All cooperative agreements, task agreements and memorandums
of understanding need to be in place no later than January in
order to implement operations in mid-June.
c) Funding notification needs to be released no later than
January 31 in order to implement operations in mid-June.
d) Cooperative agreement process between NPS and NOVA (mutual
constraints) was too time consuming (3--4 months). Delays
consumed valuable programming time and compromised contracting,
employee and volunteer screening schedules and program
marketing demands. The time to negotiate the cooperative
agreement between NPS and NOVA stands in stark contrast to the
one month it took to negotiate a Memorandum of Understanding
between NOVA and Prince William County Park Authority.
e) Date of funding notification in March, 2009 in combination
with the final Task Agreement completion (June, 2009) came much
too late to deliver the program as originally designed
requiring major structural program changes as NOVA was not
willing to commit funds without the agreement in place and a
promise of funding.
f) Date of funding notification came to both NOVA and sub-
partners much after summer program marketing materials had been
prepared and distributed in mid-February. One solution
discussed for FY2011 is to market the CAMP S.E.E.D. program
without regard to the availability of funding and to operate as
a full-cost recovery program. In the event grant funding was to
become available, scholarships would be made available and
publicized in web based format.
g) It proves to be difficult to celebrate the partnership with
the NPS in printed and static marketing materials in advance of
funding notification. Clarification of partnership outside the
scope of grant funding could be better defined.
h) Most Ranger programs are for limited time periods of 1 - 3
hours. Partners have expressed concern that without future
funding, access to day-long intensive Ranger programs like CAMP
S.E.E.D. will not be sustainable in future years.
3) The effect of National Park Service policy on partnership
a) The NOVA partner's understanding of NPS transition toward
centralization of agreement approval through regional offices
seemed to create a set of unknowns regarding time required to
approve the partnership, coordinate task agreement and
cooperative agreement documentation and method/mechanism of
distributing grant funds.
b) The learning curve for the NPS in regard to partnership and
resulting new policies may create administrative delays.
c) The learning curve for future partners is steep and can
lead unnecessarily to frustration with the timing of programs
and program marketing (see Recommendation's section regarding
partner training).
4) Accomplishments of and benefits to the National Park Service,
Shenandoah National Park, Northern Virginia Community College
and Prince William County Park Authority by virtue of
partnership
a) Partnership delivered successful resource based learning
evidenced by the completion of the Junior Ranger program and
the Leave No Trace Awareness program by participants promoting
environmental awareness and lasting concepts of stewardship in
the participants.
b) Created sustainable constituencies between partner
agencies.
c) Created connections between partner agencies and
participants and their families which have resulted in repeat
visits to Shenandoah National Park since program completion.
d) Participants visited multiple national park sites; Prince
William Forest Park, Antietam National Battlefield, Great Falls
National Park and Shenandoah National Park and one municipal
park, Locust Shade, Prince William County Park Authority.
e) Exposure of participants to healthy leisure activity
choices.
f) Program gained the attention of the Let's Move Outside
campaign which is supported by the Department of the Interior
and the Department of Agriculture. The Let's Move Outside
campaign is a part of First Lady Michelle Obama's nationwide
Let's Move campaign to end childhood obesity. For more
information regarding this program visit: http://7bends.com/
2010/06/21/shenandoah-hiking-and-outdoor-program-for-families/.
g) A multitude of youth with high risk profiles were served in
both years 2009 - 2010. Participants were referred to our
program through Department of Social Services, school
counselors, and local police departments.
h) The program served a culturally diverse group of youth;
children with documented cognitive disabilities, children from
the local foster system, and children who received free and
reduced lunch in the public schools (used to evidence economic
need).
i) The program served a balance of male and female
participants.
j) Parents reported great things as a result of participation
in the program:
- My child is allergic to effort but she can't stop
talking about climbing and hiking!
- My child wants to work for the program next year as
a Counselor in Training.
- My children loved being in the outdoors.
- My child took me back to the park so I would know
about the trees and where we camped.
- My child wants to come back next year to help teach
the new kids!
- My child has spent his time differently after camp
and is beginning to choose better friends.
- My child has never enjoyed camp before participating
in Camp S.E.E.D.
- My child said that this program was one of his all
time favorites and he has lots of family camping
experience.
- My child could participate because you made access
to camping gear possible otherwise we couldn't afford
to send our child to camp.
- My child was extremely shy and now has the
confidence to express interests.
- My child was afraid to sleep in a tent but now wants
their very own tent and sleeping bag.
- My child had so much fun, I wish you would teach me
how to camp so I could take my whole family camping!
k) Attached please find photographs of engaged and happy
participants and their drawings about the environment (see
Appendix A). These pictures are evidence of the successful
delivery of meaningful outdoor experiences.
l) Offered diverse programming in the spirit of the Children's
Outdoor Bill of Rights (http://www.kidsoutside.info/
billofrights.php); hike a trail, discover wilderness, camp
under the stars (we even brought in an astronomer), catch and
release frogs and insects, explore nature, play in the stream,
swim, hug a tree and celebrate the rich heritage of public
lands in their neighborhood and in their state.
m) Offered diverse programming in keeping with the concerns
raised in the H.R. 3036: No Child Left Inside Act of 2008.
n) Successful programs in past years increase likelihood of
future program success and increases in registration.
o) Program diversity was achieved. Not all children are
comfortable with a week-long sleep away camp. The use of
Shenandoah National Park campsites allowed shorter overnight
programs (1 and 2 night experiences).
p) The program served as the first opportunity for more than
half of the participants to spend the night outside, to spend
time in the dark, and/or to sleep in a tent. We combated
homesickness and fear of the dark by creating night programs
and having night-staff that were there to greet a concerned
child. We had lots of lanterns too!
q) The program served as the first experience for 80% of the
children to participate a Ranger program in a national park.
r) This was the first time that 83% of the participants (2009
- 2010) had visited Shenandoah National Park.
s) The program exposed participants to appropriate field
technology by creating exercises using hand-held GPS units for
resource investigation.
t) The 2010 program was the first time that 100% of
participants gave up their cell phones and other electronic
devices for two nights and three days and forgot to request the
return of these devices at the end of the program in Shenandoah
National Park. They didn't miss them. They forgot all about
them. The participants actually spoke to one another in person
rather than texting the child standing next to them. They spent
time writing in their journals, taking videos, interviewing
each other, interviewing the staff, interviewing the rangers,
drawing pictures, playing cards, making s'mores, helping clean-
up, pitching tents, and cooking. Children slept on the way home
on the bus or talked together about their experience throughout
the week, admired their patches and their Junior Ranger
booklets. They were wet, dirty, tired, and loved every minute
of the great outdoors!
u) Northern Virginia Community was successful in meeting
stated commitment to partnerships. Shenandoah National Park was
identified as a partner under a 2009 Task Agreement. NOVA is
committed to partnerships that ``create gateways of
opportunity'' with ``local governments to develop key
relationships with local governments that are willing to invest
in NOVA as a strategic asset in their localities future''.
(http://www.nvcc.edu/president/strategic_vision.pdf)
v) NOVA successfully partnered in 2009 with Community
Recreation Services, Camp Ravens Quest, Fairfax County
Government, Fairfax, Virginia to deliver the CAMP S.E.E.D.
program.
w) NOVA successfully partnered in 2010 with Prince William
County Park Authority to deliver the CAMP S.E.E.D. program. To
view the program page please visit the link: http://
pwcparks.org/RecreationGolf/LocustShadePark/SEEDSummerCamp/
tabid/582/Default.aspx.
x) The Recreation, Parks & Leisure Studies program (NOVA) was
academically successful in creating educational service
learning opportunities for college students which helped to
facilitate career exploration for RPK students. Interest
stimulated supports the Student Career Experience Program
(SCEP) and Student Temporary Employment Program (STEP)
programs. It also planted seeds in the minds of participants
about careers related to the environment and outdoor
recreation.
y) Academic credit was awarded by NOVA to students who studied
issues in Camp Management (RPK 121) during the summer programs
at Shenandoah National Park.
z) The Recreation, Parks & Leisure Studies was successful in
placing students in part-time and full-time employment directly
related to the implementation of the CAMP S.E.E.D. program with
sub-partners.
A1) NOVA students in the Recreation, Parks & Leisure Studies
program have expressed interest in the Camp Management course
and working with the CAMP S.E.E.D. program and Shenandoah
National Park up to a year in advance of the program
demonstrating dedication of college students to the program.
A2) NOVA Recreation, Parks & Leisure Studies students and CAMP
S.E.E.D. participants have expressed interest in becoming
National Park Service, or U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of
Land Management employees.
A3) Prince William County Park Authority identifies partnership
in general as one of their agency goals in their 2010 - 2015
Strategic Plan. The plan specifically states that the agency is
to ``Develop partnerships with a focus on environmental
sensitivity and awareness''. Therefore partnerships that share
dedication to ``environmental initiatives'' are of highest
priority.
A4) Prince William County Park Authority has reached out to the
NPS locally as Prince William Forest Park (NPS) is the home of
Camp Mawavi for the last 5 years. Prince William County Park
Authority would prefer that the relationship be more than a
rental site for Camp Mawavi and enter into a partnership with
the park to benefit from the subject matter expertise of the
park employees and programs. For more information visit: http:/
/www.pwcparks.org/Portals/0/Camps/PDF/
Mawavi%20Brief%20Sheet%202010.pdf.
A5) The 2010 grant allowed Prince William County Park Authority
to expand programming, program destinations and ability to work
with another National Park. Without this grant, Prince William
County Park Authority may not have considered Shenandoah
National Park (NPS) as a potential partner. Prince William
County Park Authority is committed to return to the park with
programs and hopes to formalize their partnership relationship
with the park.
5) Review methodology for project determination
a)The Recreation, Parks & Leisure Studies program
(NOVA) selects projects based on relevance to course
content and curriculum goals, institutional capacity to
serve, ability to create service-learning opportunities
and student commitment from student leaders in the
Recreation & Parks Society (a NOVA Student Activities
organization which may be found on line at
www.nvcc.edu/rpk).
b) Prince William County Park Authority places a
higher funding (FY 2011) and programming priority on
all programs which have components of ``environmental
sensitivity, awareness, education, and stewardship''.
6) Recommendations for future program partners (non-
fundraising partners)
a) Refine definition of partner types - create
guidelines and set parameters for program partners
(non-fund raising partners and academic institutions
not associated with research) and publish these
guidelines on the agency websites.
b) Develop links ``So you want to be a NPS partner'',
``What to expect'' and ``Next steps'', and ``FAQ's''
and add to the ``About Partnerships'' webpage. It looks
as though there are links created that are awaiting
activation on topics: Forming Partnerships, Partnership
Management, NPS Management Realities, Alternative
Funding, Special Partnerships that may address these
issues (www.nps.gov/partnerships/about.htm).
c) Develop a link on the ``About Partnerships''
webpage to include a link to the ``Reference Guide to
Director's Order #21 Donations and Fundraising'' which
contains fantastic materials (www.nps.gov/refdesk/
DOrders/DOrder21.html).
d) Develop partner suitability screening mechanism
(survey, questionnaire, or checklist) to help federal
agencies ensure suitability of and institutional
capacity of the partner (perhaps something like this
already exists).
f) Expand ''Dynamics of Successful Partnerships'' website page
in case studies section to include sample task agreements,
sample Memorandums of Understanding with sub-partners,
participation statistics and program outcomes may be featured
to encourage future partnerships (www.nps.gov/partnerships/
inspiration.htm).
g) To address the concern regarding value of partnership so as
to reduce financial risk to the NPS, the NPS may wish to take
the opportunity to train existing partners and groups
interested in partnership side-by-side with their park managers
and employees (after pre-qualifying the partner).
h) Program partners may be willing to serve as regional
training locations in order to reduce demands on NPS facilities
and staff preparation for training. NOVA would be willing to
serve as a training destination.
i) Training of partners may be a pre-requisite to partnership.
Much as a pre-bid conference, if a partner is not willing to
participate in regional training, then their request for
partnership may be denied.
j) Training of partners may help to streamline and the process
of the task agreement and help set mutual expectations.
k) Negotiated timelines would aid partners with regard to
resource allocation, support contracts, hiring of staff,
background checks and coordinating volunteers and sub-partners.
l) NPS, USFS, BLM to systematically approach neighboring
community colleges, colleges and universities for program
support with the agencies as service learning is on the rise as
an educational modality.
Conclusion
The opportunity to partner with the National Park Service at
Shenandoah National Park has been inspiring. It has been a pleasure
sharing this information with the Subcommittee on National Parks,
Forests and Public Lands. All partners look forward to a sustained
relationship with the National Park Service.
Thank you Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee for this
opportunity to address the these important issues. I would be happy to
answer any questions you may have.
______
Mr. Grijalva. Mr. Greg Moore, Executive Director, Golden
Gate National Park Conversancy, San Francisco. Good to see you
again, and we thank you for the hospitality you extended to us
when we visited that fine part of the world. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF GREG MOORE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GOLDEN GATE PARKS
CONSERVANCY, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
Mr. Moore. It was our pleasure. Chairman Grijalva, Ranking
Member Bishop and Members of the House Subcommittee on National
Parks, Forests and Public Lands. Thank you for the opportunity
to testify today.
At the Golden Gate National Park Conservancy we enjoy a
very productive and excellent partnership with the National
Park Service. Since our inception about 30 years ago, we have
provided almost $200 million of support to National Park
Service projects and programs at the Golden Gate National
Recreation Area.
In partnership with the National Park Service, we have
developed a volunteer program that recruits 20,000 volunteers a
year, providing 400,000 hours of volunteer service, the largest
national park volunteer program in the country.
Working with the National Park Service is an important
honor for us. Together we have achieved significant results for
the American public. We do this by effectively blending
National Park Service talents in Federal appropriations with
philanthropic dollars in support. We always ensure that the
Park Service plans and priorities guide our direction as we
seek philanthropic support.
As the Subcommittee considers the important role of
partnerships for the National Park Service, I have a few
perspectives to offer.
First, partnerships with the National Park Service should
be fueled by effective collaboration. Clearly the most
successful partnerships result from true team work and
cooperation. They thrive when by the Park Service and the
partner embrace common goals, realize what each partner can
bring to the table, and set a strategy for success. This
propels the Park Service vision, a vision of the American
public bringing their time, their resources, and their funds to
support our national parks. Through a collaborative framework
the National Park Service partner can be a valuable ally in
achieving that goal.
Second, it is clear that an appropriate framework of Park
Service review and approval of partnerships is necessary, yet
the current system still needs some fine tuning. All park
partners need to understand the fundamental responsibility and
authority of the National Park Service to approve and review
partnership projects and programs, but effective collaboration
can sometimes get lost in a challenging array of regulatory and
procedural requirements.
The Park Service partnership review process still needs
finetuning since they currently place a huge burden of time and
expense, both on the NPS and its partners. The partner is
required to secure a wide array of approvals at the local,
regional and Washington level with multiple written agreements
and many layers of review. This places uncertainty and workload
on park partnerships and inadvertently creates barriers to the
ultimate goal, bringing Americans together in support of their
national parks. I believe a better balance can be achieved,
promoting collaboration and streamlining the time and effort
required in review and approvals.
Third, supportive partnership tools need to be developed
and updated. Partnerships in the National Park Service have
clearly blossomed over the past three decades, but the
authorities, the policies, and legal interpretations, in
essence, the toolbox for implementing partnerships, has not
kept pace with its growth and partnerships and the Service.
There are really few custom-made tools for partnerships boards.
Today, I don't believe there is any comprehensive
legislation indorsing the importance of partnerships to the
national park mission. There is no specific legislation
supporting the role of cooperating associations or friends
groups. There are few specific instruments for implementing
National Park Service partnerships other than cooperative
agreement authority and memorandums of agreement, which
sometimes are stretched in their utility.
In general, effective partnerships are not something that
are secured through Federal procurement processes, competitive
bidding, and assignment of significant government requirements
and procedures to a partner. That is uncommon in the nonprofit
sector. As has been mentioned before, most productive
partnerships are long-term arrangements. Many Park Service
partners have been operating for decades, some as far back as
the 1920s, and the longevity of these partnerships should be
considered beneficial and supported.
Finally, a one-size-fits-all model will struggle to respond
to the diversity of partnerships in the National Park Service.
There are park partners with long tenures with significant
project and program accomplishments, and close alignment with
the National Park Service. There are mason partners just
getting their feet on the ground and developing a relationship
with the Park Service. A Park Service support structure should
recognize this distinction, offering more streamlined processes
for well-established organizations with solid track records,
and offering training, support, and dissemination of successful
efforts for all partners. This would significantly improve the
effectiveness of these relationships across the spectrum.
Chairman Grijalva, and Members of the Subcommittee, thank
you so much for seeking our perspectives on this important
issue of National Park Service partnerships. It is my distinct
honor to work with the National Park Service and Members of
Congress in ensuring the best possible future for what has been
called America's best idea, our national parks. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Moore follows:]
Statement of Greg Moore, Executive Director, Golden Gate National Parks
Conservancy, San Francisco, California
Chairman Grijalva, Ranking Member Bishop, members of the House
Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands, thank you for
the opportunity to testify today along with my distinguished colleagues
on this panel. I'm honored to present perspectives at this Oversight
Hearing on Partnerships and the National Park Service.
I serve as Executive Director of the Golden Gate National Parks
Conservancy, as the Vice President of the National Park Friends
Alliance (the network of 52 philanthropic nonprofits that collectively
provide in excess of $50 million per year to national parks across the
nation), and as a Board member of both the Association of Partners for
Public Lands and the Conservation Lands Foundation. These affiliations
have given me a broad perspective on partnerships with the National
Park Service and other federal and state public land agencies. My
comments today represent our experiences at the Parks Conservancy and
also reflect the ongoing discussions of the NPS and Friends Alliance
organizations across the nation.
At the Parks Conservancy, we have provided about $200 million of
support to park projects and programs at the Golden Gate National
Recreation Area since our inception more than 25 years ago. We have
helped develop a volunteer corps of 22,000 annual volunteers providing
400,000 hours of service each year - the largest national park
volunteer program in the nation. We have also raised significant
philanthropic support and generated broad grassroots support for the
parks through campaigns to restore and improve our parklands.
Working with the National Park Service has been an honor for us. We
have enjoyed a long-term, well integrated, collaborative, and very
productive relationship. We have worked strategically and seamlessly
together to support and advance park priorities. We have built a broad
and deeply committed community of park supporters as volunteers,
grassroots donors, and major philanthropists. We receive gifts - small
and large - for park projects and programs. Nearly a decade ago, during
the campaign for Crissy Field, an elementary school class raised funds
to plant native plants, and the lead donor of that project gave the
largest cash gift ever given to a National Park Service project.
Nearly 90 years before that project, in 1908, the genesis of the
Golden Gate National Recreation Area was a philanthropic gift - when a
private donor purchased Muir Woods to save it from logging and damming,
and then donated the property to the federal government as a national
monument. And all of us know the power of contributing to something we
care about -America has a proud national tradition of service,
volunteerism, and philanthropy. National parks share that heritage; in
fact, the inceptions of many national parks tell a remarkable story of
these national traits in action.
We should not think of philanthropic support to our national parks
as being contrary to or in conflict with federal support and
appropriations to our national parks. Since their beginnings, and for
generations, national parks have been founded and made great by the
American public - as taxpayers and as philanthropists. Partnership is
not new to the national park system. Indeed it has long been vital to
its existence and its greatness.
Yet as the subject of this hearing suggests, partnership work is
not always easy - and everyone seems to acknowledge that there is room
for improvement. Especially now, as Americans are being asked to be
more generous than ever in their support of their national parks, all
of us must work to refine and establish the benefits, policies,
procedures, and legal authorities that support partnership work.
In this context, I have a few perspectives and accompanying
recommendations:
Partnerships function best within a structure of thoughtful
collaboration, versus rigid regulation.
The most successful partnerships in the Park Service result from
true teamwork and collaboration. They thrive when both the Park Service
and the partner embrace a common goal, recognize their strengths,
weaknesses, and complements, and share the game plan for success. This
is a collaborative framework. The Park Service asks the American public
to help and is working to facilitate the public's contributions of
time, expertise, and funds. Through a collaborative framework, an NPS
partner can provide vital support to realize that vision.
For long-term success, though, there need to be rules of the road
and clear partnership parameters. Too often the collaborative framework
is superseded by a regulatory framework, which places a huge burden of
time and expense on the NPS and partner. The result is a system
intended to safeguard the government from philanthropy rather than
invite and promote philanthropy. The partner is required to secure a
wide array of approvals with multiple written agreements that can
require inordinate time and resources; requiring review by solicitors
and attorneys at the regional and national level whose opinions may
differ; and requiring approvals from officials at the local, regional,
national level in both the administration and Congress. This puts
tremendous burdens on both the partner and the National Park Service
and creates barriers to ultimate goal - the bonding of Americans to
their national parks.
I believe a better balance can be achieved - weighing collaboration
at least as heavily as regulation. My recommendation is establishing a
joint commitment by the National Park Service and park partners to
capture, disseminate, and formalize best practices in partnership
management and to devote time and resources to training. Together we
can develop mutually acknowledged best practices as an effective
alternative to more layers of complex partnership regulations.
Supportive partnership tools need to be developed and updated.
Partnerships in the National Park Service have blossomed in the
past three decades, and more are emerging. But the authorities,
policies, and legal interpretations - in essence the toolbox for
promoting and nurturing partnerships - have not kept pace and do not
always facilitate partnerships. There are too few custom-made tools for
NPS partnership work.
To date, I don't believe there is legislation specifically
endorsing the function and importance of partnerships to the National
Park Service mission. There is no comprehensive legislation
specifically supporting the valuable role of cooperating associations,
friends groups or National Park Service partnerships, with the
exception of the National Park Foundation. There are few specific
instruments for NPS partnerships, other than cooperative agreement
authority and memorandums of agreements, which are limited in their
utility. As a result, NPS partners are sometimes seen as programs to
procure through competition and federal processes, rather than durable,
long-term partners of our national parks. Many Park Service partners
have been operating for decades, some dating back to the 1920s.
Legislation such as Challenge Cost Share Authority seems to give
the Secretary of the Interior broad authority to work with partners and
share federal resources for common goals, yet we have been told by
department and agency officials that more general federal law preempts
the full utilization of that authority. As a result, we are not working
as effectively as we can to combine federal and philanthropic funds to
achieve a common result, and we are leaving untapped significant public
goodwill and philanthropic interest.
As one solution, I recommend strengthening the purpose and intent
of the Challenge Cost Share authority through legislative clarification
that reconciles its specific intent with general federal law.
NPS partnership policies and processes can be cumbersome, overly
cautious and time consuming.
National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis has said that,
``Increasingly partnerships are essential and effective means for the
National Park Service to fulfill parts of our mission and foster a
shared sense of stewardship that is so crucial for our future.'' The
Park Service has recognized partnerships as important to its mission
and has instituted some sound partnership principles as means to
augment the agency's resources. But the policies that guide
partnerships - and the procedures required to advance them - create
barriers, lengthy delays, and uncertainty in how park-benefiting
projects and programs can be delivered.
A current effort is underway to establish template agreements that
meet mutual needs. I recommend that this effort continue with an
explicit objective to prioritize, simplify, and streamline the
agreements, policies, and procedures that underlie partnership
development and management.
Philanthropy is a competitive environment.
The competition for philanthropic resources and volunteer support
is very challenging, especially in today's economic climate.
Environmental causes compete with social causes, and donors at all
levels are bringing an unprecedentedly high level of selectivity and
scrutiny to their giving decisions. More than ever, as donors are drawn
by a cause, they are also determining which organizations can best
deliver effectively, efficiently, and with the greatest degree of
certainty and transparency in their projects and programs.
A clear commitment by the National Park Service and Congress to the
work of park partners can give a significant boost to our case for
philanthropic support. The National Park Foundation has the
congressionally chartered role of sustaining the national legacy of
private philanthropy for our national parks and has carried out that
role admirably. I recommend that local organizations with proven track
records, as well, be given the opportunity to earn appropriate
recognition and authority for the critical roles they play in
sustaining philanthropic interest and action on behalf of the national
parks.
A one-size-fits-all partnership model cannot respond to the diversity
of partnerships in the National Park Service.
Park partners can vary significantly in their scale of operations,
the size and diversity of their constituencies, their expertise,
tenure, and track record, and their relationship with Park Service
leadership and staff at the park level. There are park partners with
long tenures, significant project and program accomplishments, and
close alignment with the National Park Service. There are also more
nascent partner organizations that are newly establishing or growing
their support programs and building collaborations with their partner
parks. A Park Service support structure that recognizes this
distinction and offers more streamlined processes for established
partners, as well as training, support, and dissemination of successful
efforts for all partners, would significantly improve the effectiveness
of these relationships across the spectrum.
Chairman Grijalva, you have suggested that a Center for Partnership
could be created within the National Park system to serve this and
other functions, and we would be honored to assist in the development
of that vision.
Federal and philanthropic funds should work together.
Philanthropic and public funding are often considered in isolation.
But in many spheres, including our national parks, the commitment of
public funds can leverage significant philanthropic investment to
achieve common objectives and tangible public benefit. We see this at
the Golden Gate National Recreation Area time and again, and past
National Park Service programs intended to leverage matching private
support have proven very successful.
Yet this very effective leverage is compromised by a policy that
forces the separation of these sources on park improvement projects.
Under current policy, the NPS is constrained from providing federal
funds to combine with philanthropic funds as partners complete
important park improvement and construction projects. This problem
stems partly from the lack of legislation and/or policy designed
specifically for our partnerships.
I recommend and request that the Department of the Interior, the
National Park Service, and Congress work with park partners to resolve
the policy barriers to joining federal and private resources to
accomplish National Park goals.
Chairman Grijalva and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for
inviting our perspectives on National Park partnerships and for
considering these recommendations. It is my distinct honor to work with
the National Park Service and members of Congress in ensuring the best
possible future for what has been called ``America's Best Idea'' - our
national parks.
______
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. Mr. Jim Prater, Former Executive
Director, Richland County Legislative Delegation. Welcome, sir.
STATEMENT OF JIM PRATER, FORMER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, RICHLAND
COUNTY LEGISLATIVE DELEGATION, COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA
Mr. Prater. Thank you, sir. Mr. Chairman and Members of the
Committee, it is an honor and a pleasure to be here to talk
about one of the highlights of my life--being involved in the
partnership that created, designed and built the road and
visitor's center at what then was the Congaree Swamp National
Monument.
In order to understand the partnership--and I have to add
that after a lot of the concerns that I have heard expressed
here this morning, I guess we were fortunate. Ten years ago the
National Park Service said to us, if you can do it, we will
take it, and all we had to do was build it.
In order to set the stage for understanding our project, I
am one of the few individuals who had the good fortune to be a
part of the Citizen Action organization in 1976 that was
responsible for the U.S. Congress creating and preserving the
Congaree Swamp, and creating the Congaree Swamp National
Monument. That Citizen Action had a profound and powerful
effect on my career and choices.
It was with that background and the creation of the
Congaree Swamp National Monument that the park began to develop
the entrance to the park. It was on a privately owned dirt
road, and the family that owned that dirt road was told when
the park was created that soon the National Park Service would
have their own entrance road. Twenty years later, that family
was still waiting on the new road. It was with that context and
as a part of a local community effort to look at the three
rivers that flow through Columbia, South Carolina, that our
task force began to look at the role of the Congaree Swamp
National Monument in an economic eco-tourism effort related to
the rivers.
And we decided for that portion of the county that the only
way the Congaree Swamp was ever going to be part, and a focal
point, of any eco-tourism and economic development strategy was
if we solved the problem of access and the facilities in the
park headquarters building. The headquarters building was so
small we didn't have restrooms to accommodate school groups.
Further complicating our situation was that the bridge over the
local secondary road that was the most direct access to the
park had been judged as failing and not able to accommodate
school buses.
So, it was with those lemons that we set out to create
lemonade, I need to mention here that our partnership was a
fortunate formation because of the effort that the local Park
Service staff supported, and they attended every meeting.
Martha Vogel and Fran Rametta and many of her staff attended
every one of those discussions, many of those things not having
anything to do with theirs. And out of that we decided that we
would ask the National Guard to build the road and the
visitor's center, and set about creating a partnerships whereby
the National Park Service and the National Guard Bureau allowed
troops from the National Guard and 30-some states across this
nation to come in, in two-week rotations, and build the road
and then the visitor's center. That was accomplished from 1998
until 2001. We dedicated the facility in 2001, and in 2003,
Congaree Swamp National Monument became Congaree National Park,
South Carolina's first national park.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Prater follows:]
Statement of Jim Prater, Citizen Advocate for Congaree National Park
From Citizen Action to Citizen Soldier--The partnership between The
National Park Service, the National Guard, The River Alliance, The
Richland County Legislative Delegation and Richland County that
designed and built the Harry R.E. Hampton Visitor Center and Entrance
Road at the Congaree Swamp National Monument (now Congaree National
Park) in Columbia, South Carolina. A gift to the People of the United
States.
From Citizen Action to Citizen Soldier was the motto used by the
local leaders of the Partnership to convey what we were going to do in
the design and construction of a new entrance road, parking lots, and a
new visitor center in the Congaree Swamp National Monument. The new
facilities were to be worthy of the citizen action efforts of Harry
R.E. Hampton, a newspaperman who first raised in the late fifties the
issue of preservation of the incredible venue known to locals as the
Congaree Swamp, and the powerful grassroots citizens effort that led
the United States Congress to create the Congaree Swamp National
Monument in 1976.
The new facilities were to be built by the citizen soldiers of the
National Guard who would come from units from more than twenty states.
Each unit would spend two weeks on the project, complete their portion
of the mission and hand off the project to the next unit. The project
began with road construction in the summer of 1998 and culminated with
the dedication of the new Harry R.E. Hampton Visitor Center in early
2001. The mission was accomplished with only two people from the South
Carolina Air National Guard on site from the beginning of construction
to the final inspections for occupancy!
With what will soon be ten years of reflection on this project, my
admiration for what the partnership accomplished grows by the day. The
remarkable cooperation between all the partners, first to the vision
and then to the mission, sets a standard for all agencies and
organizations whether federal, state or local in joining together for
the best interests of all concerned. As in all good partnerships, each
party gave a little, compromised a little, contributed a little, and in
this case, risked a lot.
The partnership paid off as all well executed ones do, with a
synergy that created much more than any partner ever imagined. To
support the new facilities, the South Carolina Department of
Transportation replaced the aging bridge on the secondary road leading
to the site (enabling school and tour buses to use the most direct
route to the site). The South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation
and Tourism and local governments increased the public promotion
efforts, which prompted more local and national media coverage of the
Congaree Swamp National Monument. The new facilities and the increased
visibility of our priceless site allowed the National Park Service to
pay full tribute to Harry Hampton's original vision by designation of
the site as Congaree National Park, the first National Park in South
Carolina. Subsequent land acquisitions have added both to the size of
the Park and its potential missions. Visitation numbers now rank
Congaree National Park as one of the top ten destination sites in the
state. The new facilities and the renovated and remodeled former
headquarters, now allow education efforts that serve K-12 populations,
the general public and higher education, both undergraduate and
graduate levels.
Visitation, exploration and education have contributed greatly to
the local economy and local interest and concern for the ecosystem and
Congaree National Park is at an all time high.
We told each person who came to the project, to work, to visit, to
contribute to the thank you parties for the Guard units, or who in any
way became connected with the effort, that they were participating in
the creation of a gift to the people of the United States. I believe
that more now than ever.
Background for the Project Partnership
With the formation in 1995 of the River Alliance, a local non-
profit agency to promote the utilization of the three rivers that flow
through Columbia, South Carolina, the Congaree Swamp National Monument
became a key piece of the strategy to connect rural Richland County to
downtown Columbia, South Carolina, by developing new historical and
cultural destinations. The CSNM was seen by many as an underutilized
and underdeveloped resource but nonetheless a potential lead element in
the long term eco-tourism strategy.
There were several major obstacles to the CSNM becoming a focal
point for the river related economic and tourism strategy. The first
and most serious was access to the CSNM. The only way into the CSNM was
a privately owned dirt road. The family who owned the road had agreed
to allow access upon the creation of the Monument because they were
told that there would be a new entrance road ``soon''. Twenty years
later they were still waiting for the road. Fortunately for them, the
Congaree National Monument didn't generate much traffic because of
limited facilities at the site. The visitor center was small and
cramped and had no bathroom capability for group visits. The bridge on
the small secondary road that served as the quickest access to the site
was judged not capable of supporting loaded school buses. The
conditions in 1996 were hardly conducive to Congaree National Monument
becoming the centerpiece for any kind of economic, educational or
recreational strategy related to the Rivers.
Fortunately for all of us, the discussions and strategy sessions
and afternoon and evening sessions over cocktail napkins led to the
enlistment of the four most important people in the partnership that
was later to be formalized. These four people not only were crucial in
the formation of the initial steps of the plan, but were also to become
the chief advocates within their respective organizations and were
responsible for bringing their agencies and organizations into the
fold.
Mike Dawson has served as the Executive Director of the River
Alliance since its inception in 1995. As a retired US Army officer, he
was fully aware of the capabilities of the military and the National
Guard in particular. He also was cognizant of the fact that the
National Guard had authorization to work on federal properties and knew
all about the mechanics of making that happen. Mike is an engineer with
a wide range of projects to his military credit and his knowledge of
the construction process proved valuable in his recruitment of the
second member of the team, Mike Stroble, a retired South Carolina Air
National Guardsman who had served for many years in the civil
engineering squadron.
Chief Stroble, one of those rare individuals who spent his entire
career looking out for the organization he loved, the South Carolina
Air National Guard, and the people in it, knew everything about not
only the SC National Guard, but also the workings of the National Guard
Bureau. That Chief could pick up the phone and talk to anyone up the
chain of command and be known and respected was of immense help in
gaining the commitment of the National Guard to the project. Mike
Stroble believed in the National Guard system and especially in his own
South Carolina Air National Guard. His faith in his fellow guardsmen
and his belief that they could handle the construction project mission
inspired all of us to continue to map out the project proposal for
presentation and official endorsement by all of the Partners.
When Dawson and Stroble had convinced each other that the project
was a possibility, they began collaborations with the third key member
of the team, Martha Bogle, the Superintendent at the Congaree Swamp
National Monument. Martha, vetting the project so thoroughly and asking
a thousand questions, saw the possibility. She was an advocate for the
site, her people, and the National Park Service mission from the start.
Fully aware of any career implications, she became a leader in the
formation of the partnership and brought with her a staff ally with
boundless energy and local standing that became important. Fran Rametta
had served as a National Park Ranger at CSNM from the early years and
had become a known and well liked and respected member of the
community. His boundless and enthusiastic support of the project, both
in concept and later after approval, could not be praised enough. Fran
and Martha were glue that held the staff together during any bumps in
the process and there were some for sure.
The initial project concept was brilliant. Get the partners to
agree that we can replace the current privately owned dirt road access
with a road on the National Park Service property. The construction
would be done by the National Guard. When the road project is
successful, we propose the construction of the new Harry R.E. Hampton
Visitor Center with the same process.
The road project was such a success that the private dirt road was
replaced with a paved road and three wonderfully scaled parking lots at
a minimal cost to the National Park Service. That set the stage for the
most important discussion of the construction project and the rest is
history.
While I was only involved in this project from a local perspective,
I must say that our National Park Service is to be commended for being
a valuable and vital partner in this story. While I do not know the
names and titles of everyone in the NPS who was involved beyond Martha
Bogle and the incredible staff assigned to Congaree, I do know that the
project would not have happened without support all the way up the
chain of command. I also know that there were plenty of junctures where
support could have been withheld or delays created. There was never
anything but support for the mission and the NPS staff displayed a
wonderfully cooperative attitude all the way to project completion. As
a nation, we are to be grateful to the National Park Service that they
ventured down this unusual path to provide this gift to the American
People.
There are two more projects in Columbia, South Carolina that are
near and dear to my heart, and the only way they will ever be completed
is through some type of partnership similar to the one I have
described. The National Park Service was the first phone call the River
Alliance made.
As an illustration of the National Park Service attitude that
permeated the Congaree Swamp Partnership, I want to pass on one story
that was very important to me.
During the construction project, one of the original citizen action
group members, the President of Congaree Action Now, Jim Elder, a
science teacher in Virginia, visited the project, one of the few times
he had returned to the Swamp since the citizen rallies in the 1970's.
He was so proud that the Congaree Swamp was to get facilities that
would now do it justice, he was in tears.
I asked Jim what he would put in the exhibits that would convey to
visitors, Congaree the place. Without hesitation, he said, ``I would
put a big Cypress tree in there, big enough that people could walk into
it. Then I would have the sounds of the forest inside so that little
ones could hear and feel the forest. The tree trunk should go all the
way to the ceiling (30 feet high) so that rangers could tell them that
in the forest outside that tree would go another 100 feet or more
high''. That's what people should take away from the building.
Today, if you visit the Harry R.E. Hampton Visitor Center, Jim
Elder's vision is the focal point of the main exhibit hall. Executed
perfectly. You only have to watch the children to understand.
______
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you.
Mr. Prater. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Grijalva. Mr. Prater, let me begin with you. From the
testimony and from your comment, it sounds like the local
partners were very much behind the project. Let me follow up by
asking how has the community benefitted with the addition of
that road and that visitor's center? And that eco-tourism,
economic development concept, how has the community benefitted?
Has it been a tangible effect on the economy of the area?
Mr. Prater. Yes, sir. I had to smile when Mr. Bishop
mentioned the declining attendance. Our attendance from the
time of dedication, the increase in attendance to the Congaree
Swamp or Congaree National Forest has now placed it in the top
10 in destination sites in the State of South Carolina. I don't
know what last year's number were but there were well over
150,000 at last count, and from countries all over the globe.
The benefit to the local communities is that the increased
visitation has led to the formation of a lot of small
businesses in the area, restaurants and shops owned by local
families to take advantage of that increased visitation. So, in
addition to that, we have gained the visibility and the
publicity. If I may, I would like to relate a story.
I was in Maine in August on vacation and wound up in a golf
tournament with my partner from Augusta, Maine, who turned out
to be a boy scout leader. As a result of the national publicity
related to the Congaree Swamp, he brought his boy scout troop
from Augusta, Maine, to the Congaree National Park so that his
kids could see that priceless piece of property in the face of
the earth.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much and congratulations. It
is good testimony.
Mr. Moore, could you elaborate on the difficulty of
combining, because you have spoken about this, the private
funds with government monies in building projects? What is the
solution to that?
Mr. Moore. Sure, Mr. Chairman, I will quickly explain the
issue. For years, our Conservancy effectively combined
philanthropic funds with Federal funds to complete park
improvement projects. We believed it was good leveraging
because we would bring more funds to the table. The donors saw
the effectiveness of this in terms of a Federal commitment
being part of the project, and it was cost effective for the
Conservancy to implement projects in a timely way.
But in the past year the Department of the Interior has a
policy interpretation that has prohibited pooling Federal and
philanthropic funds for partnership construction projects. So,
as a result, when we work to create a park improvement, we have
to run duplicate contracts--one a Federal contract to implement
the Federal money, and one a Conservancy contract to implement
the private money. In our recent project, this caused the
project costs to go up 25 percent from a $3 million budget to a
$4 million budget.
So, we would like to review that policy determination and
see if there is any way to return to what we believe was a very
effective system of leveraging Federal dollars for park
improvement projects.
Mr. Grijalva. And because of the success of the Conservancy
and Brian O'Neill's work at Golden Gate, they serve as models
for parks and friends groups around the United States. How do
we pass on those lessons that you have learned there to other
park managers and friend groups around the country?
Mr. Moore. There is a tremendous demand within the Park
Service and among partner organizations to learn the
fundamental principles of good partnership. At Golden Gate, we
are constantly requested to provide training and support to
people from around the country and even around the world. It
has been alluded to before. A good training curriculum would be
beneficial. Brian O'Neill used to offer a training course at
Golden Gate with the regional office that was well received,
and even some type of partnership center or curriculum, I
think, would be beneficial here.
Mr. Grijalva. To formalize that training experience?
Mr. Moore. Yes, exactly.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. Mr. Bishop.
Mr. Bishop. I do not have any specific questions for this
panel but I appreciate your traveling here. I appreciate the
written testimony you have given us as well as the verbal
testimony given here. I am grateful that your visitorship is
up, and see what happens when you fix the bridge. Thank you
very much. Yield back.
Mr. Grijalva. Mr. Sarbanes, sir.
Mr. Sarbanes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a great
hearing. I appreciate your convening it. It is a very important
topic, the idea of partnerships.
Mr. Prater, you are great advertisement for this national
park, and I am feeling myself anxious to get down there and see
it. One of my best friends lives in South Carolina, so next
time I am down there I have to make sure I do a detour.
I wanted to talk a little bit about what Congressman Holt
had raised at the outset--his concern about the proper balance
between what the partnerships bring to the table and the
government's responsibilities to the National Park Service to
maintain those facilities, the infrastructure, and so forth.
I wondered if any of you would speak to kind of where you
think the line is, and do you worry that as we celebrate these
partnerships we may be creating an unfair expectation that the
partners can bring resources to the table beyond their
capacity? And how do we sort of police that boundary in a way
that makes it work? And I will throw it open to anybody who
wants to answer.
Mr. Moore. I am happy to jump in. The former Chair of the
National Park Foundation used to talk about the margin of
excellence that partners can bring to national parks, and I
believe that is an important concept. There has to be sound
public funding of our national parks for partners to be
effective at all. We count on the ongoing talents and resources
of the National Park Service and even in our best of days could
never replace those assets.
So, our work tends to go where we can bring a margin of
excellence to the incredible work of the Park Service through
education programs, through park projects that we can speed up
and make higher quality, and I think that is where the boundary
should lie conceptually.
The additional benefit of philanthropy, however, is that it
does create stakeholders in our national parks, whether it is a
small school child that gives 50 cents to put a native plant in
the ground, or a donor giving a multimillion dollar gift, it
creates a bonding to our national parks that reenforces their
value and their importance in the mind of the American public.
Mr. Sarbanes. Thank you. And you gave a compelling example.
Once we embrace the idea that there is a partnership and feel
comfortable that what is being brought to the table by the
different partners is appropriate, then I think we want to make
sure that the procedures that are in place help facilitate
that, and not get in its way.
You gave an example of a project where the costs had
increased by about 25 percent because of the new procedures. I
wonder if you could maybe supply us, not now but after the
hearing, with a couple of sort of the best examples of how it
was done previously in terms of a partnership arrangement where
you see the real benefits and efficiencies that could come at a
more streamline approach just so we can kind of compare and
contrast that because I think that is a valid point.
I have in my district Fort McHenry. Of course, we are
beside ourselves because we are coming up on the 200th
anniversary of the War of 1812, so we are planning a lot of
activity around that. There is a new visitor center going up at
Fort McHenry. It is an amazing resource because it is right
there in Baltimore City, a beautiful national park and natural
resource, and also, obviously, a very historic site. And we are
always looking for ways to maximize that. There are a lot of
wonderful partnerships underway. There is a Youth Ranger
Program that is bringing high school students there in the
summertime to train as rangers with opportunities to come back
later. There is what we call the Youth Defender Day. Every
September 12th we celebrate the Battle of Baltimore, you know,
resisting the British attack on September 12th of 1814, and we
have gotten 1,500 young people involved in that celebration in
recognition. Every year now the Living Classrooms Foundation,
which is a nonprofit in Baltimore, doing tremendous work with
job skills and other training for young people is working with
Fort McHenry. There are so many examples right at our
fingertips of where these partnerships make sense, and
nonprofits are coming to the table and philanthropists, and it
is really a wonderful thing.
I would like you to comment if you could. I am the author
of something called the No Child Left Inside Act, which is an
effort to promote environmental education broadly across the
country. I think at last count we had 1,900 organizations
nationally, regionally and locally who were members of this
coalition that supports the legislation and, frankly, is a
grass roots movement beyond that. The whole premise is that if
you get young people outdoors and if you integrate that kind of
approach into the educational program across the country, there
are huge benefits. There are public health benefits, there is
raising awareness of the environment as a benefit and, most
importantly, the research shows that student achievement
increases dramatically when they get this exposure to the
outdoors.
Now that is a little bit different, there was a comment
before about these sort of virtual field trips that people are
taking. I think that is great, but we also want to be thinking
about how we actually physically get students out into the
environment, and the most obvious partner for that is our
National Park System.
So, I wondered if any of you would comment, I was hoping to
ask the last panel about this as well, but just comment on the
idea of the National Park System not really even as a partner
with our education system but as an extension of our education
system. Really viewing our national parks as the premier
outdoor classroom for the next generation, and what the
benefits can be of approaching it through that kind of a lens.
So, I will ask any of you to comment if you would like and that
will be my last question.
Mr. Moore. I will jump in. At Golden Gate, maybe because of
our urban situation, our relationship with schools are
fundamental to our work. We support the park's classroom
program at Golden Gate, which reaches about 25,000 to 30,000
students a year, and of course the NatureBridge has a campus in
the park as well.
The Conservancy operates in the environmental education
center with the National Park Service, specifically focused on
bringing kids from preschool all the way through college
internships into the national park experience, and the benefits
to the young people in terms of their education, the benefits
in terms of their health, the benefits in terms of their
leadership skills, the benefits in terms of their bonding to
the National Park System and its values are completely obvious
to us. I am happy to provide you more detail about those
programs if you would like to see it.
Now, the Children in Nature Network is a great network. We
are part of the network, and they are hosting a major event in
the bay area I think this November.
Mr. Sarbanes. Right. Thank you.
Mr. Prater. If I might respond to your previous question
about the partnerships, I think where we run into problems many
times is the failure to define, going in, what we are going to
accomplish and what specifically each side of the partnership
is going to bring to the table. In our situation, it was pretty
simple. We are going to build a road to the visitor's center.
How we were going to get there was the complicated part, and I
might add to everyone here who is concerned about the National
Park Service bureaucracy, you haven't seen anything yet until
you deal with the National Guard Bureau and the Department of
Defense, and we had both.
But it was, you know, that relatively simple idea, this is
what we are going to do, and these are the problems that are
going to be solved as a result of our doing this. But then the
mechanics of the legal requirements and who is going to
supervise what, and at what stages, all of those kinds of
questions were the things that we had to solve before we ever
got to the point of anyone entertaining our idea. I think,
particularly from a citizen perspective, citizen groups tend to
quickly assume that because they donate money, they volunteer
their time, and they pay their taxes, that what their
particular group wants to do with the park is what ought to be
done in the park. I think that is where the training aspect
comes in. I think we need that on both sides. The bureaucrats
need to understand how the citizen approaches things, and the
citizens need training and support, and need to understand the
requirements of the institution. In our situation, we were
extremely fortunate in that we had probably the most
outstanding chief of the South Carolina International Guard who
knew everybody everywhere in the National Guard Bureau and was
liked and respected, and Mike Dawson, the chairman of our
group, the Executive Director of the River Alliance, was a
retired Army Colonel who had a great deal of facility
experience. So we were fortunate in that the people who came
together with the original idea knew how both systems worked.
But in talking to other folks and working with other
people, it seems to me that the failure is that each side needs
to be cross-trained in the other's world, in the other's
experience, because where they fall apart are too high
expectations or unrealistic expectations sometimes on the
citizens' side about what they are going to do, and the
failure, I think, sometimes on the bureaucratic institutional
side is to understand how that could be.
Mr. Sarbanes. Thank you. I appreciate it.
Ms. Chamberlain. Just one more comment?
I think the training also gives folks an opportunity to
focus on what the academic institutions do. Is it an
educational outcome when we bring young people to the park?
What do we want, what is an immediate learning curve, what is a
long-term learning curve? Maybe we should ask partners to track
longitudinally what the return rates are for these youth, and
how programs can be expanded.
I am obviously not focused on shovel ready, I am more
focused on the coming and doing it program. But,
longitudinally, my life spans an entire existence with the
national park. I even got married on the park birthday of the
national park. So for me it is----
Mr. Sarbanes. That is commitment.
Ms. Chamberlain. Yes, it is commitment.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Chamberlain. But that could be tracked with our youth
today. I think we need to focus some more energy on our
training, asking what those educational outcomes are, measuring
the educational outcomes for young people. I think that way the
legislation, No Child Left Inside, can be better supported in
the long run, and I would certainly like to see that happen. We
also need to include college students. They tend to get left
out in the K-12 conversation about bringing youth into the
park. They really, truly are our next workforce, and this is a
workforce development issue for me as well.
Mr. Sarbanes. Thank you.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you, sir. Any other questions?
Let me thank all the panelists, and for all the panelists,
the previous panel as well, I thought Mr. Sarbanes' one
question was a very important question. Information dealing
with best practices and comparisons as to the situation now
than the situation then would be very useful information for
the Committee. I would urge all the panelists to provide those
kinds of examples to us.
With that, let me thank you all and adjourn the meeting.
[Whereupon, at 11:59 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Additional material submitted for the record follows:]
[The prepared statement of Delegate Donna Christensen
follows:]
Statement of The Honorable Donna M. Christensen, a Delegate in Congress
from the Virgin Islands
Thank you Chairman Grijalva for this hearing, because I do think
that partnerships with a mission to benefit the Park AND the community
are the answer to issues in my district that you have heard first hand.
Right now I am looking at a Fish Habitat Partnership to bridge the
rifts between stakeholders for our fisheries and to comprehensively
address the challenges our fisheries face.
But the National Parks have already benefited from partnerships
like our sister parks across the country.
Long time relationships with the Trust for Public Lands, the Nature
and Ocean Conservancies have expanded the National Parks and continue
to help us protect some of our most precious resources.
But our local government has been a great partner, for example at
Salt River and possibly at Castle Nugent in the future; the local St.
Croix and St. Thomas-St. John Environmental associations also. The
Friends of the Park in St. John has been the best supporter the VI
National Park could ask for, the St Thomas Historical Trust has begun
to preserve and awaken the rich history of Hassel Island and there are
more.
But if there is one area where partnership could be strengthened in
my district where many of our fellow Americans have made their home it
is with the native community. The Park tries and has made good
progress, but still needs to see itself more as part of the community
and not just in the community.
I hope this hearing will help us, through our witnesses, to find
ways we can improve on the partnerships in my district and other parts
of our country where National Parks are present.
______
[A statement submitted for the record by Grace Lee,
Executive Director, National Park Trust, follows:]
Statement of Grace Lee, Executive Director, National Park Trust
Re: Where's Buddy Bison Been? A Partnership between National Park Trust
and National Park Service
Background:
As the Washington Post recently reported, large numbers of park
rangers are due to retire in the coming years and the National Park
Service is looking to recruit diverse young people to fill the ranks.
In addition, the demographics of visitors at our nation's parks do not
reflect the demographics of our country, and the rapidly growing number
of inner city youth do not have the means or interest in connecting
with our public lands.
To reverse that trend National Park Trust, a 501(c)3 non profit
land conservancy that works to protect critical park lands across the
country has developed an innovative youth education program to connect
kids of all ages and demographics to our parks and public lands. The
goal of the program is to cultivate the next generation of
conservationists.
Where's Buddy Bison Been?
In just one year, Where's Buddy Bison Been? featuring our pint-
sized wooly mascot, Buddy Bison has engaged more than 2000 students in
20 plus schools across the country. Buddy Bison is the ``voice'' that
tells children ``explore outdoors, the parks are yours!''
Along with his toolkit (filled with lessons plans, books, mini-
documentaries, games, and fun facts) Buddy Bison has been used by
teachers of grades pre-K through 8th grade to transform our parks into
outdoor hands-on classrooms. By sparking children's interests in the
environment at a young age we are planting the seed for the next
generation of park enthusiasts. Children enjoy taking Buddy Bison to
different parks and sharing with us their photos and adventures which
are included on his map at BuddyBison.org
Currently, Buddy Bison schools are located in DC, Colorado,
Maryland, Minnesota, Utah, New York, North Carolina, Texas, and
California. In the coming months we will be adding schools in Nevada
and Wyoming. Most of our schools are in underserved communities.
However, because it is important to connect kids from all socioeconomic
levels to our parks, we have four schools that are not in underserved
communities.
Partnership with NPS
A key component of the program is our partnership with the National
Park Service. Working with park officials and educators, NPT has
facilitated numerous trips to local parks for hundreds of inner city
children who ordinarily would not have the opportunity to play
outdoors. Our program would not be successful without their support and
expertise.
NPT does not receive any funding from NPS. In fact we have provided
in-kind gifts of Buddy Bisons and T-shirts to hundreds of DOI and NPS
staff members and officials. Since April 2010, in partnership with
Eastern National, thousands of our Buddy Bisons have been sold in 60
park stores in 20 states; the proceeds benefit our Youth to Parks
National Scholarship Fund for at-risk students. We have been asked on
numerous occasions to provide our life size Buddy Bison mascot at DOI,
NPS, and Let's Move events. We receive our funding from major donors,
corporations and foundations. We hope that the sales of our Buddy
Bisons and other educational products will provide an additional steady
source of revenue.
Because of our unique relationship with schools, we have the
ability to ``mobilize'' and engage thousands of students. The highlight
last year of the inaugural year of our program was our Buddy Bison
Earth Day celebration that coincided with the 40th anniversary of Earth
Day. Working with NPS and DOI, we hosted more than 650 students on the
National Mall with Secretary Ken Salazar, NPS Director Jon Jarvis,
teachers, parents, and DOI employees. Most of the funding for the event
was provided by NPT's donors and other environmental partners.
More recently, we were contacted by NPS to bring our Buddy Bison
students to the first national Fossil Day Celebration at the National
Mall and Smithsonian on October 13, 2010.
Challenges of Connecting Kids to our Parks:
Funding new funding resources: We have more schools that would like
to be part of our Buddy Bison program and our current schools have
asked us to help facilitate more park experiences. However the rate-
limiting factor to grow our scalable program is funding for staffing,
resources and transportation. One of our most frequent requests is for
funding for school buses.
Scheduling and planning: In underserved schools, teachers do not
have the resources and time to create a park experience for their
students. We address this need with our program.
Staffing at Parks: Some parks do not have staffing to work with
schools. More staffing/volunteers are needed to work with schools that
would like to visit the parks.
Partnership Challenges:
Often we are unaware and do not understand the relationships
between parks and their friends group and who best to contact if we
want to plan an education program at a park. (We do not seem to have
this problem when we are working on a land conservation program.) The
NPS system is complicated and often challenging for us to comprehend
and navigate.
It would be very helpful if the Washington DC office of NPS had a
partnership team that could be the first point of contact for non-
profits and friends groups to answer questions and direct us to the
proper park employees and other potential non-profit partners.
We would urge regional directors and the Washington partnership
office to keep the cooperative agreement process streamlined so that
they do not take long periods of time placing a financial burden on a
non-profit. Also the policies and laws related to partnerships need to
be communicated in a concise, comprehensive format to all involved.
As the philanthropic of NPS, would NPF consider hosting a
partnership summit where:
NPF could learn about the work of other non-profits
and potential partners
Non-profits groups can network
Policies and laws of partnerships be presented; learn
do's and don'ts
Build on their initiative to teach small friends
groups about fundraising by providing workshops