When you choose to donate to the parks’ maintenance endowment of EPF, it can bring significant and enduring effects on Eugene parks and trails. Here are the key impacts of making a donation to this endowment:

• Legacy and Perpetuity: By contributing to the EPF’s parks maintenance endowment, your donation becomes a part of a lasting legacy. It ensures that your commitment to our parks and trails is preserved indefinitely. The impact of your contribution extends far into the future, benefiting upcoming generations and ensuring the continuity of the organization’s work. The EPF’s parks maintenance endowment allows your philanthropy to have a perpetual impact, leaving behind a meaningful and enduring legacy.
• Financial Stability and Resilience: An EPF’s parks maintenance endowment provides a financial cushion that helps withstand economic downturns, fluctuations in funding sources, or unexpected expenses. Having a robust endowment empowers Eugene Parks Foundation to establish a more secure financial foundation and reduces its dependence on other funding avenues, such as grants or donations, which can vary over time.
• Enhanced Planning and Flexibility: Endowments offer our parks greater flexibility and planning capabilities. With a sustainable funding source, the EPF can focus on long-term planning, strategic initiatives, and innovative projects without relying solely on short-term funding cycles. This flexibility enables the organization to seize opportunities, respond to emerging needs, and invest in areas that align with its mission and long-term goals.
• Expanded Impact and Reach: An EPF’s parks maintenance endowment allows us to expand the impact and reach of our community. The reliable income generated from the endowment can be utilized to scale existing programs, launch new initiatives, or extend services to underserved populations or geographic areas. By donating to the endowment, you contribute to Eugene parks’ ability to make a broader and deeper impact on the communities and causes we serve.

An Opportunity for Lasting Conservation
The Eugene Parks Foundation (EPF) has been approached by the Hudson family, the current stewards of this invaluable resource, to explore options for conservation. By extending the South Eugene Meadows and Ridgeline Trail system onto the property, there is an opportunity nave the chance to create a vital corridor for wildlife and recreational enthusiasts alike. Adjacent to the South Eugene Meadows Park, and with the support of abutting landowners Sara and James Gillette, this initiative promises to enhance connectivity and preserve vital ecosystems.

Spencer Butte, Hendricks, Skinner Butte, Owen Rose Garden, and Alton Baker parks have all become keystones of the Eugene park system. None of them would have been possible without the foresight and generosity of the park advocates and stewards who came before us.

Our community has long understood the need to preserve what is integral to the very fabric of this place we call home. Through the Legacy Land Fund the Eugene Parks Foundation has already helped to acquire hundreds of acres of critical natural area property for public use. Land donations can be complicated, and the Foundation can help you smoothly and easily facilitate the transaction.

The Foundation, dedicated to supporting all aspects of parks for Eugene area residents, seeks to continue this legacy of dedicating public parks through private funding with the establishment of a Legacy Land Trust. The major functions of the Legacy Land Fund are:

• Securing funds for timely acquisition of property with the flexibility of a private charitable foundation.
• Encouraging the purchase of properties where there is a planned future park need and where at some point the fund may be able to recover or “recycle” donations through reimbursement.
• Facilitate the donation of property to offset some costs associated with surveying, deed preparation, and legal expenses.

The Foundation is always excited to discuss the potential donation of property for public park use or access now or as a pledge for the future. Click here to learn more about the acquisition efforts of our partners, Friends of the Ridgeline.

What are Park Prescriptions?
As the health and nature movement grows, the definition of Park Prescriptions continues to evolve.
ParksRX focuses on programs or interventions that…

1) Include a health or social service provider
2) who encourages their patients/clients to spend time in nature with the goal of improving their health and well-being.
3) Park Prescription programs can be as diverse as the communities for which they are designed and they often include collaboration between park and public land agencies, healthcare providers, and community partners.

ParkRx Model Reflections (PDF)
Prescribing parks success stories (PDF)
Park Prescription PowerPoint (pptx)

The recreation scholarship program allows low income youth from Eugene to access recreation programs that are offered at all community centers and pools.  By contributing to this scholarship program the Parks Foundation directly supports youth in building a variety of life long skills. As stated in the Youth and Family Mission, this program creates opportunities that inspire a lifelong passion to imagine, explore, learn, grow , and contribute. What we create for youth today returns to us as future stewards of our community and natural resources.   

In September 2022, the Eugene Parks Foundation began working with the City of Eugene to plan, design, and build four new trail/trailhead projects to increase and enhance our magnificent trail system.

A joint task force that includes staff from the Parks and Open Space Division and the Eugene Parks Foundation (EPF) board and volunteers recently scoped out the proposed projects with the help of Chris Bernhardt, a professional trail developer who will lead these projects for EPF.

Important design criteria will include quality of the trail experience, connectivity, proximity to transit, the ability to incorporate mountain bike areas, equity, and overall accessibility. To learn more, please visit www.eugeneparksfoundation.org.

 Click here to take a look at the preliminary trail maps!

The reason we are able to transition from an idea to a design phase and then onward to construction lies in the fact that we are small, effective, and focused.

We make the magic happen with the support of the City of Eugene, our extraordinary Board, and the key financial support of our LEGACY CIRCLE. The Eugene Park Foundation’s Legacy Circle consists of donors dedicated to sustaining our commitment to excellence in public parks and recreation services.

Here’s how the Legacy Circle works and why it’s a great time to become a member:
• Legacy Circle members pledge $1,200 a year for three years. Three-year pledges help create the financial stability and capacity to plan and deliver.

• Our goal is to recruit 30 new Legacy Circle members by the end of 2022. To help make this possible, a generous Legacy Circle donor will match your new member’s first-year gift of $1,200 if made by December 31st.

Please contact us at ariel@eugeneparksfoundation.org or visit our website for more information on becoming a Eugene Parks Foundation Legacy Circle Member.

Four brand-new, free and accessible Spray Play Parks will be builtaround Eugene. Striker Field Spray Play is slated to open in 2023.Construction on the Santa Clara Community Park Spray Play begins in2024 with Bethel and Mattie Reynolds to follow.

Spray Play Parks bring community members together by promotingfree waterplay, socialization, and parent-child bonding.

Our Spray Play Parks will incorporate creative storytelling and artistic elements.

Acknowledgment Opportunities

Name a Spray Play Park – $250,000
On Site Recognition- $25,000