1. Fundraising

Although many Friends started out as special volunteer groups, the realities present in park funding make fundraising a necessary function of Friends. Certain Friends groups are able to undertake major capital campaigns for special projects in their park. The capital campaign for the Gettysburg National Battlefield Museum and the Cuyahoga Education Center are great examples of bringing in unique projects to parks. Such grand projects make Friends a highly sought after commodity, but it is important to remember that the road to major capital campaign is long and arduous.

In order to undertake a capital campaign, most Friends usually need at least four or five years of growth to reach a certain level of capacity. By then, according to Yosemite's Superintendent Mike Tollefson, the Friends group is able to attract certain board members who can bring other donors through their connections. A committed and active board, he notes, is vital to a high functioning Friends group. Fundraising is most effective when both the Friends and the park are active participants. At Rocky Mountain National Park, the Associates have an approved fund-raising campaign to support the development of park publications. Funds are made available to the cooperating association and the projects are jointly decided on by the Executive Director of the association and the Chief of Interpretation at the park.

According to Charles Taylor of Santa Monica NRA, being cognizant of the length of time that it takes for a Friends group to develop, as well as having the willingness to devote appropriate time and resources can lead to stronger Friends groups. Most Friends start out as volunteer organizations and cannot fundraise until they have paid staff. At Big Bend National Park, Superintendent John King returned a $30,000 donation from their Friends and advised them to use those funds to hire an Executive Director to grow their capacity. In-kind financial support and staff time investments from the park often allow Friends groups the flexibility and support to design better support projects through the addition of paid staff and better project development and design.

The major frustration for Friends unequivocally is red tape and bureaucratic restrictions. It is difficult for Friends to deal with the glacial speed at which the Park Service often moves when it comes to project approval or handling donations. Currently, the National Park Service Director's approval is required for all projects over $1 million and Congressional approval is needed for projects greater than $5 million. Both the Friends and Park Service staff feel that Directors Order 21, the official guideline from the National Park Service which details the restrictions and policy as they pertain to fundraising in the park units, needs to be revised in the areas of project approval and donor recognition.

Friends are not only conduits for private funds for parks but also encourage philanthropy in parks. Friends often have their pulse on the philanthropic landscape of the great community. For example, at the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, they often conduct feasibility studies of projects amongst their donors so that they can ensure the success of their fundraising campaigns.

Donors may prefer to give to Friends rather than parks because Friends offer accountability and transparency that is not available in a large bureaucracy. Deny Galvin, retired Deputy Director of the Park Service noted that parks need to understand that donors give not in support of the Park Service but rather because of an affinity to the land or resource that is located within a park. In fact, most donors do not want to be "double taxed" nor do they want to offset Congressional appropriations with their donations. Friends ensure that the funds are used to create opportunities in education or outreach. When the Cuyahoga Valley National Park Association raises funds for the Cuyahoga Valley Environmental Education Center, the selling point for the program is the opportunity to educate and create future stewards of the environment (instead of pitching the project as direct support to the park).

2. Friend-raising

Friends groups not only bring money, but also "friends" to a park. Even though Golden Gate's Crissy Field restoration project raised $34 million dollars, Golden Gate's Brian O'Neill does not extol the fundraising abilities of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. Instead, he talks about the Conservancy's ability to friend-raise. Friends encourage the donors and the greater community to become stakeholders in the park, thereby, creating an opportunity to grow the park's support constituency.

Friends allow a park to reach out and build a group of supporters in the community. Often these groups end up serving as the park's community liaison and voice. Golden Gate wanted to attract Hispanic users, who make up a large part of the population of the three counties where the park's lands are located so the conservancy consulted with them when planning began for Crissy Field. The community indicated to the Conservancy that weekend picnics were a common recreational activity for large family gatherings. According to the Conservancy's Carol Prince, the design of Crissy Field incorporated the suggestions of the Hispanic community by clustering the tables rather than using the single unit design. Now, Crissy Field is actively used by multiple community and ethnic groups, and the park is a vital part of the San Francisco experience.

Without the projects and efforts of Friends, many users have an impersonal and anonymous relationship with a park. Friends, through outreach, can offset tricky resource protection issues. The Santa Monica Mountains Fund made a strong effort to engage a family that owned land around the park which the park eventually purchased. When the local landowners were protesting the purchase, the daughter of the family spoke out on behalf of the park and addressed the concerns of the opposition. Friends often send out newsletters or informational packets informing their members and the surrounding gateway communities of the park of the latest issues concerning the park. Friends often have annual reports to inform the community of the various projects and activities of the park to encourage future involvement.

3. Advocacy

With the ability of Friends to connect individuals to a park and create friends for parks; such engagement often leads to advocacy. Friends have unique access to key members of the community and the boards are often composed of the movers and shakers who can make things happen. According to Ron Tipton of the National Parks Conservation Association, "the beauty of a Friends group is that they are the perfect entry point to politicians at any level of government." For example, a Friends of Gettysburg board member was instrumental in getting Senator Rick Santorum interested in Gettysburg National Military Park. Now the senator is one of the park's most vocal supporters.

Advocacy for parks is a sensitively orchestrated matter between Friends groups and parks, because the nonprofits are private organizations and may hold views that differ from those of the Park Service. This area of possible tension can be offset by mutual trust and open dialogue. Friends of Acadia is a strong advocate on issues that relate to the Acadia area and works on preserving the agency-nonprofit relationship. The partners have a formal understanding that Friends' financial support to Acadia will never be jeopardized unless there are issues of non-performance on a project. Policy differences between the park and the Friends of Acadia do not interfere with Friends' grants to the park.

Most Friends do not advocate on park policies, but if they do, they try to make the relationship with the park their foremost priority. The Friends group most noted for its advocacy efforts is Friends of Acadia. Friends of Acadia differs from most other Friends groups in several ways: 1) it supports community projects in addition to Acadia National Park projects; 2) it makes grants to various community initiatives; 3) it actively advocates for policy changes that it believes are important; and 4) it is a "watchdog" to monitor issues and speak out as it deems appropriate even if its position differs from that of the NPS, and Friends is often called upon to testify before Congress or the state legislature.

Many Friends groups take on advocacy as part of their mission when they grow past the development stage. Joe Kessler of the Friends of Virgin Islands National Park said that as the group became more established and accomplished more projects with the park, they realized that their commitment is really to the natural and cultural resources of the park and not just as a park fundraising arm. He notes that the Friends group never publicly confronts or berates the park, but rather engages the superintendent privately on issues or concerns that the Friends feels need to be addressed.