The National Park Service receives hundreds of millions of dollars a year in donated funds, goods, and services to support its 391 parks and other sites, but concerns abound regarding undue donor influence, new long-term maintenance costs, or commercialization of parks, GAO has said.
It said that to address concerns the Park Service has developed and refined policies for managing donations, but questions remain about the agency’s ability to do so effectively.
The Park Service’s donations and fund-raising policy includes directives in key areas to protect the agency against risks, but their effectiveness is diminished because parks do not always follow these program requirements, and the agency has no systematic process to monitor conformance, according to GAO-09-386.
It said the Park Service could take a more strategic approach to managing donations and partnerships, and it could further refine information on donations, as well as increase employees’ knowledge and skills for working with nonprofit and philanthropic partners.
Further, the agency could benefit from a long-range vision of the desired role of donations and related partnerships, but despite growing indications of the need for one, the Park Service has neither a strategic vision nor a plan for how to achieve it, GAO said.
