How City Parks Foundation Channels Funds to Small Parks Nonprofits Across New York

iDig2Learn and neighbors expand Urban Forest on Roosevelt Island. Photo by Audrey Gray Courtesy of iDig2Learn

Nineteenth-century landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted is best known for co-designing Central Park, New York City’s planned oasis smack dab in the middle of Manhattan. Like so many native New Yorkers, this reporter holds many fond memories of the park — tadpole fishing with his father near 108th Street and 5th Avenue, mastering the ice (well, sort of) at Lasker Skating Rink, and cheering on my late grandmother, who ran in the New York City Marathon.

Olmsted was responsible for many other city parks, and his legacy still looms large in New York, where he sought to establish “the lungs of the city.” While his and other city parks remain public spaces, philanthropy has come to play a large part in their creation and maintenance over the years.

Central Park Conservancy, for example, has raked in huge support from funders like the Paulson Family Foundation, the Bennett Family Foundation and the Richard Meier Foundation. But this isn’t the only parks nonprofit in town by any means. City Parks Foundation (CPF) was founded in 1989 by Bronx novelist Avery Corman, best known for “Kramer vs. Kramer.” A product of New York City public schools, Corman restored a basketball court in his old neighborhood in the late 1980s, which became the catalyst for CPF’s creation. His mission to create free programming and “activate” city public parks continues today through CPF educational programming like Coastal Classrooms and the well-known Summer Stage Concert series — which has spread beyond Central Park.

Parks have become even more important shared spaces in recent years, offering an important refuge during the early days of the pandemic, hard to find in a city as jam-packed as New York. CPF stepped up during those turbulent times and established the Green Fund, which makes grants to small parks nonprofits. Last fall, the fund gave $475,000 to nearly 70 of these nonprofits. To carry out its work, CPF taps support from funders including the Libra Foundation, the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, and the JPB Foundation.

Inside Philanthropy recently caught up with CPF Executive Director Heather Lubov, Helmsley Charitable Trust Program Officer Tracy Perrizo and others to find out more about CPF’s three decades of work, their vital Green Fund, how they’ve drawn support, and what they have in store down the line.

When the pandemic hit

Since graduating from Columbia in the early 1990s, Heather Lubov has held exactly four positions, all in the nonprofit sector. She started at Partnership for the Homeless as a program assistant before joining NYPL in the mid-1990s to work in development. Later, she was at Park Avenue Armory before coming on as executive director of City Parks Foundation in 2014. Despite working at these huge institutions, when COVID hit, Lubov says it wasn’t exactly clear how organizations like City Parks Foundation might apply for aid.

“All the parks groups were sort of left behind, not really sure what to do. And it wasn’t clear if we were eligible for some of the bigger relief funding that was available,” she said.

Lubov, though, drew from her past experience to make it work. Back when she was working in development NYPL after 9/11, she helped spearhead the idea of making joint funding requests with the city’s three library systems. Together with the two other systems, she approached several funders as a group. The idea was that there is strength in numbers. So Lubov decided to replicate this strategy after the pandemic hit, given that many parks groups were unsure of how to navigate this moment.

Out of this came the Green Fund, which was initially only a relief effort in the few months after the pandemic hit. As so many places closed, parks were still open, and they became one of the few places where people could safely convene. So the fund addressed basic needs like keeping parks staff employed, as well as trash cleanup and overall park upkeep.

CPF has always had a small grantmaking program, Lubov explains, giving away around $75,000 to $100,000 annually to several hundred grassroots volunteer groups that have relationships with local city parks. But COVID changed the calculus. “It was pretty clear that that wasn’t a sufficient amount of money, number one.” Lubov said. “People who didn’t think about parks suddenly started to understand why parks are so important, particularly in communities that don’t have a lot of public spaces.”

Lubov praises the work of Central Park Conservancy, but notes that such an institution couldn’t support all the parks around the city. So her focus through CPF’s Green Fund has been focusing on giving private support to supplement public dollars in the city’s many parks.

Helmsley steps up

Headquartered on Park Avenue, the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust works across six key program areas as diverse as support for Israel and research on Crohn’s disease. But one of its program areas is New York City, with a focus on what the foundation calls “health stability,” which includes behavioral health, housing and homelessness, and increasing access to green spaces.

When NYC Program Officer Tracy Perrizo first joined Helmsley, she says their initial work within this bucket focused on increasing the capacity of the city’s emergency food system. But this eventually broadened to a focus on helping populations with complex health and social needs. Helmsley’s green space work is a smaller component of this, Perrizo clarifies, but she knows how important parks can be to someone’s emotional and physical health.

Helmsley started setting up a green space portfolio, she says, and got to know CPF back in 2018 after connecting with Lubov. “We were learning about how much access she had with some of the smaller, green-based stewardship organizations in the city, which was much of our interest in her work. She’s involved in so many circles to improve New Yorkers’ access to parks and park space,” Perizzo said.

Helmsley first backed CPF in 2019 with support for its Catalyst program, a multi-year effort to revive park land and support community engagement in historically underserved New York City neighborhoods. Perrizo says Helmsley continues to support Catalyst to this day.

By the time of the pandemic, Helmsley was already well aware of CPF’s track record, as well as its knowledge and relationships on the ground. So it was not a tough sell to get the foundation to support the Green Fund, as well. “You could feel the pressure right away. We were hearing about it from Heather. So together with other donors, we felt pretty strongly about helping her get that work done and get some of our dollars closer to the ground,” Perrizo said.

Helmsley continues to back the Green Fund, and in August of 2023 made a $1.3 million gift over 36 months. The next iteration of its work will focus on capacity-building for some of these grassroots nonprofits, including Eastchester Road Community Garden in the Bronx, Red Hook Boaters in Brooklyn, and Malcolm X Boulevard Beautification Group in Manhattan.

Grassroots and youth education

Another 2023 Green Fund recipient is iDig2Learn, founded on Roosevelt Island by Christina Delfico, who knows a thing or two about creating educational programming for youth. The longtime Sesame Street producer started iDig2Learn in 2012 to allow children and their families to explore science and the origin of food through plant life.

When she was standing up her nonprofit, Delfico began by connecting with community-based institutions like schools and youth centers. Even before receiving funding, she says they were well aware of the kind of work CPF was doing. “We’ve known about them for years. They’ve been been a big part of New York City,” Delfico said. When the Green Fund launched, Delfico applied for a grant and the rest is history.

Delfico speaks about the flooding and storm surges happening in cities across the country, not to mention around the world. As climate impacts worsen, these challenges will remain in cities. But she reminds us that nature, including trees, can work as a stabilizer. iDig2Learn is looking to expand urban forests, starting in Lighthouse Park in the northernmost part of Roosevelt Island. “It’s an incredible spot. The East River splits and there’s this island, Roosevelt Island, under the Queensboro Bridge. It’s baby Manhattan. It’s right there in the middle of the river. And there’s this park,” said Delfico.

With the grant from Green Fund, iDig2Learn will run programming focused on planting trees, caring for them, and thinking about trees as a “who” and not a “what,” she said. This would be a jumping off point for the kind of deeper educational programming she envisions. “Let’s build this urban forest out and expand the tree canopy, but do it in a way that invites people to have this socially acceptable excuse to come out and make friends and have fun.”

City Parks Foundation has an annual operating budget of around $20 million, according to Lubov. But with around 150 grantees annually, CPF wants to add another few million dollars in grants. This is no small lift for a medium-sized organization, but Lubov and CPF at large are excited about scaling up.

“It’s a very different role for us to play. But we’re the only citywide parks organization that could do something like this. And I think funders value the fact that we have relationships with all of these small groups so that we can evaluate the quality of their program,” Lubov said.