Manage Your Relationship with the National Park Service
- Develop a positive relationship with the National Park Service superintendent and regional director.
- Develop a positive personal relationship with your superintendent and his/her top staff. Make sure both staffs are also developing these relationships and working together at the project level. At Acadia, Superintendent Sheridan Steele is part of the search committee for my successor, and the National Park Service engaged me meaningfully in filling the park superintendency.
- Establish your organization as a business equal to the National Park Service. Do not subordinate your organization to the NPS, but also do not mentally place your organization in a superior position.
- Conduct as much business as possible directly through the superintendent. You owe it to your donors to deal at the top.
- Never surprise the superintendent. Ask the superintendent never to surprise you.
- Admit and apologize for mistakes that your group makes. Friends organizations can be uneven and sometimes create hassles and unwelcome complications and workload for NPS.
- Let the superintendent work the connection with the NPS regional office. Assist only when the superintendent agrees it would be helpful.
- Keep your organization independent from National Park Service.
- Keep your organization rigorously nonpartisan and non-electoral.
- Never publish a critical word about the Park Service or an employee. (I strayed once in the case of an official whose behavior was out-of-bounds. I should have handled it more discreetly.)
- Always characterize the Park Service positively in public venues even if your organization's published view differs from the agency's-i.e., differ respectfully with the NPS when your organization thinks it is necessary to do so, and do so diplomatically.
- When speaking publicly about friends-park joint accomplishments, always thank the park staff front and center, and equally your own staff and volunteers.
- Do not let respectful differences with the park interfere with agreed grant schedules. It breeds distrust and subtracts from a principal benefit of park philanthropy, namely that nonprofit funding must be reliable in its context.
- Run interference and take flak for your park. Often your organization can say what NPS employees cannot. When a troublesome park management issue arises and the community needs to be educated on sensitive matters that might cause a backlash were the park to lead, consider using your friends group to bring the issue forward. Use good judgment in deciding whether to employ it.
- The only valid reason for a friends group to withhold funding is government nonperformance or substandard performance on written project agreements. (That has never been an issue at Acadia National Park in my ten years with Friends of Acadia.)
- Actively help create and nurture the image of the National Park Service staff as highly professional and dedicated. Make sure this comes from the heart and is in no way patronizing or hollow. Likewise, the NPS should help nurture and create the positive image of the friends group.
- Always let the superintendent know in advance, by phone or in person, if you plan to make any kind of statement supporting or differing with a NPS position.
- Recognize that formal memoranda of agreement (MOAs) with the park are good-fences-make-good-neighbors policies and are necessary. Real partnership success depends on the personal relationship and mutual respect between the park superintendent and you; and the personal relationships between the friends' and the park's program staffs. It all boils down to trust.
- Ceding to a government agency some of a private organization's First Amendment rights is a serious matter. I personally feel that part of the success of the Acadia National Park/Friends of Acadia partnership comes directly from the positive creative tension naturally present because of FOA's freestanding character.
- Your voice on policy matters carries special weight in Congress given your organization's private sector grants to the national park. You might be surprised how attentively you are listened to on a range of park issues because you are laying down money.
- Learn as much as you can about basic National Park Service history and the agency's culture and operating procedures. Ask your staff and board to educate themselves to a modest degree.
- Ask that key park staff learn about your organization's mission, operating philosophy, institutional constraints, and the basics of philanthropy.
- Your most important job as CEO is to achieve project efficiency by meshing government operating strictures, private nonprofit operating liberties and your donor obligations.
- Recognize that the National Park Service functions at government speed and your nonprofit operates at for-profit speed. Negotiate the difference-achieve the middle speed on each project. You and the superintendent must clearly and formally agree on project schedules. Both must understand the credibility consequences for each partner if schedules go awry. This goes to heart of whether donors will trust the National Park Service and whether your nonprofit can become a prestige donee -- a charity that has a stable of satisfied contributors who will support the organization and the park over the long-term, including through estate planning.