Blog Category: Fundraising
Upgraded electical service to support more support from volunteers ...
One of the nice pleasures of traveling between the campgrounds on the Blue Ridge Parkway is visiting with the campground hosts. These are volunteers who are most often retired, have committed the whole or part of a season to serving the public, and simply enjoy this as a way of life for a season in a beautiful location. Read more »
James Coman, III, (L) the founding executive director of the Blue Ridge Rural Land Trust; and Dr. Bill Herring (R), chairman of the conservancy's board of trustees. Photo courtesy of Miles Tager.
The first time that my wife and I met James Coman was at his personal request for us to meet him on a mountain top. It was a blustery day in January of 1998. He was working then to acquire Bullhead Mountain in Alleghaney County for a bird sanctuary and to protect one of the grand views from the Blue Ridge Parkway. The project took him two years and a half millions dollars (we made our gift; his personal request was too compelling); it is now in the hands of the State of North Carolina and managed by the North Carolina office of the National Audubon Society. Two words are on the back of James’s name tag – persistent determination. Read more »
Parker the Bear, the Bear That Shares - trademarked
My earliest memory of giving for a cause was as a sixth grader when I collected nickels, dimes, and pennies to save the USS North Carolina battleship from the scrap yard. The Save Our Ship campaign was conceived by Governor Terry Sanford and led by campaign chair, Hugh Morton. Over 700,000 children participated, demonstrating one of the most marvelous aspects of this campaign — the many small, heartfelt contributions of thousands school children adding up to save something so large. Read more »
(L-R ) Houck Medford, executive director of the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation; Marla Stellpflug O'Byrne, executive director of Friends of Acadia; K.B. Medford, Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation (photo by Mike Stagg)
When the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation was incorporated in the spring of 1997, its leaders examined two existing partner groups to serve as models for its creation — Friends of Acadia and the Yosemite Fund. These were two of the most successful park partner organizations in existence, and remain so to this day. I quickly established relationships with the model group leaders, Ken Olson and Bob Hansen — both of which have recently retired after many years of serving their organizations. The Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation was successful in its second year to reach a threshold of $100,000 which qualified it to become a member of the Friends Alliance — an ad hoc group of park partner professionals who met annually to discuss mutual issues of concern from fund raising to national park service policies. Both Ken and Bob have remained true to this day, available at any time for advice and counsel. I am grateful to you both for your continued availability in your new life. Read more »
Volunteers from the Carolina Mountain Club, photo courtesy of Mark Monroe
The budget crisis of the Blue Ridge Parkway can in many ways be likened to the energy crisis for the for the United States — it will take more than a solo solution answer e.g off-shore drilling for the U.S. fuel supply vs. an increased budget for the Parkway. The solutions are multi-factorial and one important component for the Parkway’s success will be a larger commitment of volunteer man-hours. The Parkway has made a step in the right direction with hiring a volunteer co-ordinator to work from the Parkway’s headquarters and whose task will be to bring greater capacity to the park in recruitment, management, and recognition.
The Blue Ridge Parkway is fortunate to have such a dedicated volunteer work-force and we can now expect those numbers to grow.
I attended the annual awards event in Asheville recently and heard the accolades for those which were selected district winners. They were heart warming, but having worked as a Parkway volunteer and having started the Parkway’s Adopt-A-Trail program years before there was even a Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation, all the volunteers, regardless of level of commitment or hours of service need to be recognized as the “Blue Ridge Parkway Volunteer of the Year.”
