For 30 years, Austin Parks Foundation has worked tirelessly to pursue our mission of enhancing people’s lives by improving our city’s public parks, trails, and green spaces. With more people choosing to become residents of Austin, our parks are more loved than ever before. The generous support of our community ensures our parks are preserved and well-maintained. Our donors help us make sure safe and vibrant parks are accessible to every Austinite.
Our goal is to improve Austin’s parks by building community through our parks with people at the forefront of our work. We are all parks people.
For as much as our community benefits from our parks and green spaces, they are typically the first community resources to suffer budget cuts during economic downturns. And even more disheartening, they are rarely restored to baseline levels, even in good economic years, leaving them perennially underfunded and under-maintained. Parks are facing pressing needs including maintenance to failing amenities and structures as well as staffing, construction, and other improvements.
APF's Biggest Accomplishments Over the Past 30 Years
- Raising and distributing more than $50 million for the improvement of Austin’s parks, green spaces, and trails.
- Undertaking the complete renovations of Zilker Lawn, the Zilker Eagle, Auditorium Shores, and Republic Square Park.
- Keeping people at the forefront of our work with a hands-on approach, we reach people in their neighborhoods and help them achieve their goals for their parks. To date, we have provided nearly $4 million in Community Grants to neighborhood parks across Austin.
- Generating tens of millions of dollars through budget advocacy for the Parks Department operating budget as well as bond initiatives.
- Inspiring our community to get involved in the maintenance and preservation of their parks through volunteerism impacting nearly all of Austin’s nearly 300 parks.
- Between our individual workdays held throughout the year and 20 years of our largest annual volunteer event, It’s My Park Day, APF has:
- Deployed nearly 100,00 volunteers in our parks
- Accrued more than 300,000 volunteer labor hours
- Invested nearly $6 million in park labor
- Collaborating with people, organizations, leaders, communities, businesses, neighborhoods to not only collectively improve and maintain our parks, but ensure equitable access to green spaces through large financial investment.
30 Years of Volunteerism, Innovative Programming, Advocacy, and Financial Support
The generous support of our community ensures our parks are preserved and well-maintained. Our donors help us make sure safe and vibrant parks are accessible to every Austinite.
Throughout the years, financial support has helped us improve nearly every park in Austin. You can see our total impact and financial investments HERE. Below is a list of some of our most successful projects.
