Considering the Recreation and Parks Department is underfunded to a large degree, alternative funding methods need to be explored to implement the recommendations made in Patterson Park’s Master Plan.  One way to help fund operations and maintenance at parks is through private donations from individuals.  Most notably, solicitation of private donations has been successful in New York’s Central Park and San Francisco’s Presidio Park.  Patterson Park is clearly a different kind of park with different demographics.

For instance, Central Park and the Presidio are surrounded by multi-million dollar homes.    Both parks also have park conservancies that help fundraise from these wealthy property owners.  These conservancies are able to raise millions of dollars every year.  Patterson Park does not compare.  Patterson Park is surrounded by modest rowhomes, not multi-million dollar properties.  In addition, Patterson Park does not have a park conservancy to aid it in fundraising.  Instead, fundraising from private individuals falls on a local non-profit – the Friends of Patterson Park.

The fundraising experience by the Friends of Patterson Park demonstrates that relying on private donations to help fund operations at Patterson Park will not work.  Between 2015 and 2017, the Friends of Patterson Park had between 440 and 550 individual donors a year.  Income from those donors were relatively low – ranging between $76,617 and $87,202.  This is not a lot of money compared to the $2.8 million in recommended operations and maintenance improvements identified in Patterson Park’s Master Plan.  90% of individual donations in 2016 came from those that reside in the neighborhoods surrounding Patterson Park and 79.4% of those donors were homeowners.

Unfortunately, homeowners in the neighborhoods surrounding Patterson Park are highly mobile.  In 2015, the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance (BNIA) reported that Canton, Highlandtown and Patterson Park had some of the lowest homeowner retention rates in the entire City with 37.1% to 41.4% of those homeowners selling their homes within five years of purchase.  BNIA also reported that 66% of those that initiated moves in Baltimore City moved outside of the city.  These neighborhood and city-wide statistics suggest that the residents in neighborhoods surrounding Patterson Park are highly mobile with a large percentage moving into and out of the area within a relatively short time-frame.

Assuming that homeowners who reside around Patterson Park will continue to make up the most likely individual donors, identifying and soliciting these prospective donors will be challenging with such a mobile population.  Existing donors that move out of the area are unlikely to continue to donate.  Former donors that leave the area must be replaced with new donors.  This would require constant outreach and acquiring these new donors would be costly.

The amount of prior donations and the costs of donor acquisition suggests relying on donations from private individuals is an inefficient way to fund maintenance and operations recommendation made in Patterson Park’s Master Plan.