Community stewardship makes our shared public places better and our neighborhoods more livable. Caring for places together makes us happier, healthier, more empowered, and better connected. Community stewardship has created and sustained some of San Francisco’s most unique and beloved public spaces, including parks, sidewalk gardens, community gardens, and public stairs. Community stewardship helps conserve San Francisco’s rich biodiversity – the many species of plants, animals, and other living things with which we share this peninsula. City departments work hard to care for streets, parks, and natural areas, but our city would be diminished without the work of volunteers.
The recent demise of San Francisco Parks Alliance (SFPA) was a big setback for community stewardship of San Francisco’s commons. It followed other city government scandals and recent city budget cuts, both of which have reduced the public resources available for care of the commons.
What was SFPA, and what happened to it?
SF Parks Alliance was a nonprofit organization formed from the merger of the Neighborhood Parks Council and Parks Conservancy. The organization did several things. It advocated for parks and open spaces, including initiatives like the Blue Greenway. It ran programs which activated public places. It was a conduit for individuals, companies, and foundations to donate to park and open space projects. And it was the fiscal sponsor for 80 separate community initiatives, providing them with a place to hold funds, a tax-deductible donation platform, insurance, and grant compliance.
SFPA’s management spent millions of dollars in restricted funds – funds which were committed to specific projects, and funds which belonged to community organizations – on general expenses. The misuse of funds became public in April, and both community groups and the City soon discovered that money owed to them was gone.
In early June SFPA’s board of directors voted to lay off all of SFPA’s employees and dissolve the nonprofit, turning the dissolution process over to a consulting firm. It will go through a process called assignment of benefits to creditors, which is similar to bankruptcy proceedings. Any person or organizations owed money by SFPA will have six months to submit a claim, and any remaining SFPA assets will be distributed to claimants. Claimants will likely receive a fraction, if anything, of what they are owed.
SF Parks Alliance misuse of funds and its quick dissolution left the 80 community organizations in a crisis. They lost the funds housed in SFPA, as well as insurance, legal and grant support. Many groups have put their volunteer work days on hold since they lost insurance, and others can’t complete projects without funding or a means to receive grants.
What the City should do
SFPA’s misuse of funds and its abrupt dissolution has been a huge blow to community stewardship across the City. The City should do all it can to clean up the mess left behind by the SFPA fiasco, and become a better partner to communities in caring for the commons.
- Recovery of funds. City government wants to recover funds owed to them for park projects. The City should also use its powers to make the community orgs whole as well.
- Rebuild capacity to support community stewardship. City requirements have made nonprofit corporation status essential for receiving grants, and dealing with increasingly complicated grant compliance. To support community stewardship, especially in less-resourced communities, it’s essential to rebuild the capacity – financial, technical, and so on – to support dozens of community initiatives. SFPA’s fiscally-sponsored projects have formed the Community Partner Network coalition, and want to restore the nonprofit capacity to support their projects and future ones. The City should help them do that.
- Become a better partner. The city’s support for community stewardship and events varies from department to department, and comes and goes within departments. There have been some recent efforts to reduce impediments to individual and community care for the commons, like the Shared Spaces and Love Our Neighborhoods permit reforms, but in other areas the City has raised barriers. The City should be more consistent and strategic in supporting community stewardship and community use of streets.
San Francisco can and should evolve into an exemplary partner city, which sustains and promotes the creation of value by community. The rights and responsibilities of city and communities can be made clear. Every City department tasked with care of the civic commons should develop the capacity necessary to support community stewardship, and every department should reduce unnecessary rigamarole. This is not about replacing City workers with volunteers; the city workers who care for the commons are invaluable and deserve more support as well. Community stewards benefit enormously from the guidance and expertise of City staff. We should robustly support both City workers and community stewards so our commons can thrive.
What Livable City is doing
Streets and public spaces are core to Livable City’s mission of empowering and inspiring San Franciscans to co-create an equitable, healthy, and joyful future. We are doing what we can to reduce the harm caused by SFPA’s implosion, and support community stewardship of the commons.
In July, Livable City became the fiscal sponsor of Sutro Stewards. Sutro Stewards builds community, connects people with nature, and protects and enhances Mount Sutro, one of the city’s wildest and most beautiful green spaces. They work with volunteers to develop and maintain multi-use trails and conserve habitat for locally native plants and wildlife. Since 2006, Sutro Stewards’ creation of multi-use trails and connections between open spaces has allowed the public to explore this exceptional place and expand opportunities to enjoy and recreate in nature. Their habitat conservation, ecological restoration, and native plant propagation are conserving this important refuge for San Francisco’s native plants and animals. Sutro Stewards has one of the largest organized independent volunteer pool in San Francisco, engaging over 1,000 volunteers each year and hosting six or more events a month.
We are working with other community organizations who need fiscal sponsorship support. While we don’t have the capacity to take on all of the SFPA partners, if you are interested in working with LC as the fiscal sponsor for your stewardship project, please contact us.
Finally, we are strengthening our advocacy for community stewardship of the commons. In the past year we have worked to reduce permit hassles for public space improvements, and helped community partners access City funding for planning and capital improvements to public places. We want to grow our capacity to create greener and people-oriented streets and plazas, conserve and restore natural areas, expand parks, plazas, and community gardens in under-served areas, and use nature-based solutions to address climate resiliency and sea level rise challenges. If you want to support our capacity building you can donate or volunteer with us.
