Philanthropy through Park Partnerships

Abstract

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