Published December 22, 2023
Foundation President: “Your parks need our help.”
Guest blogger: Vince McKelvey, Five Rivers MetroParks Foundation President and community volunteer
Five Rivers MetroParks celebrated its 60th anniversary this year. The park district began in 1963 with a group of committed citizens who saw the pressing need to protect our natural areas from development. Today, the park district protects and manages 16,676 acres at 35 locations in and around Montgomery County, including 18 MetroParks, the 2nd Street Market, eight conservation areas and eight portions of the region’s paved trail network.
Getting into nature is good for both the body and the soul. Research shows that spending just 20 minutes a day outdoors strengthens the immune system, provides better sleep, lowers depression and anxiety, and improves concentration and focus. Those types of benefits were well on display during the pandemic, when the parks remained open and became an even more vital outlet as other parts of society had to shut down.
For 60 years, MetroParks has been preserving greenspace, natural habitats and waterways at a time when protecting natural areas is an environmental necessity. True to its mission, the park district continues to provide free and easy access to nature for people throughout the region. Ninety-eight percent of Montgomery County residents live within a 10-minute drive or bike ride of a MetroPark. The parks saw 3.46 million visitors in 2022.
Just as the park district needed the community’s time, commitment, and financial support to get started 60 years ago, it needs our help today.
Our community generously supports the property tax levy that provides the bulk of MetroParks’ funding, but the levy alone is not enough. Proceeds from the levy provide 87% of the funding that MetroParks needs to operate each year. For years, other public funds were available to supplement the budget, but that’s no longer the case.
Even with good stewardship and stretching its resources — the agency’s spending per acre is 82 percent less than the national average for parks — there’s a 13 percent gap in the budget that must be up through alternative revenue sources, including grants and philanthropic donations.
That’s where the Five Rivers MetroParks Foundation and park lovers like you come in.
Philanthropic gifts are essential to closing the gap in the park district’s funding. Through these gifts, the nonprofit MetroParks Foundation helps the park district to provide education and recreation programs, to support conservation initiatives, to replace outdated facilities, to sustain wildlife, to promote youth development, and to make outdoor experiences accessible to everyone in our community.
I’ve been a member of the Foundation board since its first meeting in January 2015 and I’m currently the board president. I’ve seen the ways the Foundation has been able to help the park district over the last nine years, taking on projects large and small that were outside of the regular operating budget.
In 2019, for instance, the Foundation restocked first aid materials for the MetroParks’ rangers after their supplies were depleted in the Oregon District shootings. This year, the Foundation supported a new interpretive trail at Carriage Hill MetroPark, the instillation of the first ADA accessible dock at Possum Creek MetroPark and it began fundraising in earnest for a major capital project, a much-needed replacement of the splash pad and playground at Island MetroPark.
The Five Rivers MetroParks Foundation is relatively new. We’re still in the business of telling people we’re here and expanding our base of donors. Currently, 0.1% of our community helps support the Foundation through philanthropic gifts. We like to imagine what would happen if that increased to even a full 1%.
The park district’s beautiful outdoor spaces help to define our shared history and heritage, and it needs our commitment beyond the tax levy. Five Rivers MetroParks is dedicated to being a vibrant and valuable community resource that makes our region a better place to live, work, learn and play.
The MetroParks Foundation is committed to helping it do so, providing critical support to meet pressing needs.
This holiday season, please consider making a gift to the Five Rivers MetroParks Foundation and to continuing the legacy of the generous and visionary nature lovers who gave us our park district 60 years ago.
