Healthy Parks and Philanthropy Opportunities

Ontario Parks is committed to promoting healthy parks, healthy people programs, and philanthropy and volunteering are crucial for them to provide these benefits to park lovers while still achieving parks’ mandates. Philanthropy and volunteering can even accomplish more than just providing funds and time. 

A collaboration story by Park People on “The Role of Philanthropy in Parks” notes that philanthropy in parks also presents an opportunity to promote racial equality and support priority /underrepresented groups like Black and Indigenous communities. According to Park People, there is value “beyond the dollars and cents” which arises from park philanthropy. Another important aspect of philanthropy is its “community capacity and stewardship-building element… Philanthropic projects can also help bring people together. While solely city-funded park projects include community engagement elements, the quality of that engagement can be different when community members are more directly involved in raising funds, conceiving of a project themselves, or both.”  

One set of philanthropic opportunities available in parks is being a donor. There are lots of opportunities to donate toward parks, often indirectly through non-profit agencies. Ontario Parks, in listing some of the notable accomplishments of Friends of Ontario Parks (some independent, not-for-profit charitable organizations that are “dedicated to supplementing and enhancing the unique educational, recreational, research and resource protection mandates” of parks), listed their involvement in the boardwalk and observatory at Presqu’ile Provincial Park, an accessible trail at Mashkinonje Provincial Park, Huron Fringe Birding Festival at MacGregor Point Provincial Park, Art in the Park at Bon Echo Provincial Park and Footprints In Time Trail (FITT trail) at Bonnechere Provincial Park. Some donation opportunities listed by Ontario Parks also include the Turtle protection project (aimed at helping “All 8 of Ontario’s turtle species are now ‘at risk’”), the discovery program (aimed at supporting educational programs offered in Ontario Parks and in-school program), the trails & recreation (aimed at trail maintenance and restoration and developing new recreation spaces), and so on.  

Legacy gifts, or planned donations given as part of your estate or will, also form an important part of philanthropic opportunities in Ontario Parks. In seeking to promote legacy giving, Ontario Parks has made it easy for interested donors to leave a legacy to Ontario Parks by providing all information that is necessary and required to leave an effective legacy gift.  Despite the challenges of not having an online donation platform, Ontario Parks is taking advantage of secondary online charity profiles, such as CanadaHelps, and receiving donations over the phone in order to boost more philanthropy opportunities.  

Another set of opportunities that are available is volunteering with parks. BC Parks, in listing some of the numerous ways in which volunteers may participate and share their knowledge and skills with parks, noted these as including supporting conservation and recreation projects, trail maintenance, learning new skills and sharing valuable skills and knowledge while making a positive impact, building friendships and community; helping conserve biodiversity, taking part in environmental restoration, long term ecological monitoring & ecological inventories, invasive plant control, ecological reserve warden program; park management and planning; as well as facility restoration.