The Friends of Penn Treaty Park is a community organization dedicated to preserving and enhancing the beauty and usefulness of historic Penn Treaty Park.
The park grew from the location of a prominent elm tree in the Lenape village of Shackamaxon that was the site of a historic treaty between the Lenape and William Penn. After the tree fell during a storm in 1810, a monument was erected to commemorate the treaty, which was expanded into a small park in 1893 and again to the current park in the 1980s. It's now about seven acres along the Delaware River in Fishtown, and serves as passive recreation for the neighborhood and city.
The Friends are an independent 501(c)3 organization that aims to preserve and improve the park, and represent park users. We host monthly cleanup and planting days and run a variety of events. The group is entirely volunteer-run with no paid staff. For many years the Friends have primarily been funded by generous grants from the Penn Treaty Special Services District (PTSSD).
Within the last few years, the Friends of Penn Treaty Park underwent a significant turnover of board members and a large expansion of volunteers during the pandemic. Now that things have settled after a period of rapid change, we would like to do some long-term planning to ensure that the group remains stable and sustainable while growing to better represent park users.
We'd like to understand how comparable friends groups operate to provide reasonable goals to reach for and examples of how we might achieve them. Ideally this would include strategies to
- diversify our funding
- recruit and retain diverse volunteers and board membership
- ensure the group is transparent and community-oriented
- build relationships with other organizations with related interests
Currently, the board has eight members and meets quarterly. We also have a Grounds committee that meets monthly and runs monthly service days, and an Events committee that meets as needed to organize events in the park throughout the year. We have received grants from PTSSD for up to $65,000, and recently completed extensive waterfront plantings funded by a state DCED grant.
As a small working board, burnout can be an issue. We also want to recruit a variety of talents and ensure that the Friends group is actively welcoming to all park users. The park is located in an area of heavy development pressures, and it's important that the group grow in a way that preserves its history and peaceful community nature.
We would love to receive a document that includes:
- Comparisons to other similar organizations to help us understand what is possible.
- A set of reasonable "established organization" goals to work towards. For example, should we be aiming to eventually have a full or part time staff person? What kind of membership base should we try to develop? What kinds of expertise should we try to have on the board?
- Outline a plan to diversify funding, and increase as needed to achieve other goals
- Outline a plan to diversify, recruit, and retain volunteers
- Outline a plan to diversify, recruit, and retain board members
2024-2025
