The National Park System is a network of natural, historic, and cultural treasures. The system’s 385 park units include 56 areas that are formally titled “national parks,” as well as many other designations. As the network’s federal manager, the National Park Service is charged with conserving “the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” In short, the agency has the difficult task of balancing resource protection with providing for appropriate public use, including meeting the needs of nearly 300 million park visitors each year— responsibilities that entail considerable management and financial challenges. To manage this diverse system, the 385 park units are arranged within seven regional offices. These offices offer administrative or specialized support not always available at the local parks. However, the true hub of the system’s management is the park superintendent. Superintendents oversee each park unit, and the agency relies heavily on their judgment for most decisions affecting local park operations. For financial support, the Park Service depends primarily upon federal funding. The agency’s fiscal 2003 annual appropriation totaled over $2 billion, supplemented by financial support from admission and user fees collected at park sites, franchise fees paid by over 600 park concessioners, and private donations. Nonetheless, federal funding has not kept pace with increasing responsibilities. Accordingly, the Park Service has launched several initiatives seeking expanded supplemental support, including one promoting increased partnering with nonprofit and other private organizations. Nonprofit organizations have a long history of partnering with the Park Service. Since the agency was created in 1916, the Park Service has developed partnerships with nonprofit organizations, as well as for-profit concessioners, to help serve its mission. These partners supply important financial and nonfinancial assistance, in effect, supplementing congressionally appropriated funds available for park use. The Park Service is authorized by statute to accept donations and to enter into agreements with nonprofit organizations and other fundraising partners. The two types of nonprofit partners discussed in this report are cooperating associations and friends groups. Cooperating associations are corporate entities with boards of directors and an executive director responsible for day-to-day management. The Park Service requires that cooperating associations operate as tax-exempt organizations and employs a standardized cooperating association agreement identifying the specific federal statutes (see app. II) and agency policies that govern agency and association responsibilities. There is no specific legal definition or federal statute for friends groups; most are local volunteers organized for a specific purpose or interest in a particular park. The Park Service does not require friends groups to operate as tax-exempt entities or to have formal partnership agreements with the agency, unless these groups raise funds for the parks. Moreover, the Park Service does not have a standard agreement governing friends group operations or specific policy guidance for friends groups. Guidelines for park fund-raising activities are the primary source of park policy covering friends group activities. Although other nonprofit organizations also provide services and conduct commercial activities, such as guided hiking and rafting trips at park sites, these organizations are not included in this review. Park concessioners are a third type of Park Service partner discussed in this report. Concessioners provide such services as lodging, food, and guided services, and sell merchandise at park stores. Generally, concessioners are private, for-profit entities. Concessioners operate under Park Service contracts or permits that require them to pay a franchise fee to the park where they operate and that specify agency oversight functions and concessioner responsibilities. Cooperating associations and friends groups support 90 percent of the nation’s 385 national parks. Parks are increasingly reliant on support from these organizations; contributions from these organizations went from about $27 million in fiscal year 1997 to over $47 million in fiscal year 2001, totaling over $200 million during this period. In addition, cooperating associations and friends groups have accumulated funds and other assets—such as land, buildings, and equipment—worth more than $200 million that could become available for future park donations. Nonprofits also provide considerable nonfinancial assistance such as volunteer services. A cooperating association or a friends group supports park programs and operations in 347 (90 percent) of the nation’s 385 national parks. Of the 347 parks, 136 have both types of nonprofit organizations, 187 have only a cooperating association, and 24 have only a friends group (see table 1). Thus, cooperating associations support about 84 percent of the nation’s parks and friends groups support about 41 percent. The Park Service does not maintain an accurate database of friends groups or complete financial information on cooperating associations working with the parks. As a result, we constructed a database using existing Park Service data, tax records that are available on nonprofit organizations, and friends group responses to a GAO survey. Appendix III lists each national park that is affiliated with a cooperating association and/or friends group. Since 2001, an estimated 215 nonprofit groups—66 cooperating associations and 149 friends groups—have worked with 347 parks across the country. Cooperating associations often serve multiple parks while friends groups are typically associated with a single park. Table 2 shows the number of each type of organization and the number of parks served. Moreover, much of the support provided by nonprofit organizations is concentrated in a few large cooperating associations that serve many different parks. As table 3 shows, 5 cooperating associations serve about 58 percent of all 385 national parks, or 70 percent—225 of 323—of all parks served by cooperating associations. One of the key characteristics of these large cooperating associations that serve multiple parks is that they have the ability to serve smaller, less visited park units that might not be able to otherwise provide bookstores or educational services. For example, Eastern National operates some bookstores as an educational service to visitors even though the stores are not profitable. Eastern National can do so because it operates at 127 parks and shares money from its more profitable locations with its less profitable locations. This shared donation approach allows the association to operate bookstores at small locations like the Charles Pinckney National Historic Site (29,272 visitors in 2001) that are not as commercially viable as other parks. On average, as table 4 shows, the five large cooperating associations operate in parks with lower visitation and operating budgets than other associations. Nonprofit contributions to the park system doubled from fiscal years 1997 through 2000, before dropping in 2001. Specifically, as table 5 shows, the total contributions by cooperating associations and those friends groups for which we were able to obtain data rose from about $27 million in 1997 to about $53 million in 2000, before dropping to about $47 million in 2001. Cumulatively, these contributions are substantial. Cooperating associations and friends groups contributed over $200 million to support park programs and projects from 1997 through 2001. Table 5 also shows that revenues from both types of nonprofit organizations followed a pattern similar to that of contributions, increasing from about $110 million in 1997 to about $178 million in 2000, but dropping to $148 million in 2001. The decrease in contributions and revenues in 2001 may be related to decreased park visitation or other negative commercial effects following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as agency officials speculate, or to the general economic downturn and corresponding reduction in charitable giving that has occurred across the United States. In addition, during the 1997-2001 fiscal year period, the Golden Gate National Parks Association made large contributions. These varied considerably from year to year and help explain the fluctuation in cooperating association contributions (see app. IV). Although contributions and revenues from both cooperating associations and friends groups increased considerably over the 5-year period, the increase in friends group contributions and revenues is most dramatic. This increase may be explained by recent increases in the number of friends groups as well as by the relative newness of friends groups compared to cooperating associations. According to Park Service data, the number of cooperating associations changed little from 1996 to 2001, rising from 64 to 66 and then dropping to 65 as 2 associations merged. In contrast, friends groups are recent additions to the park scene and are expanding more rapidly throughout the park system. While the Park Service does not have historical data on friends groups, in the six parks we visited the years of incorporation for friends groups operating in these parks generally ranged from 1988 to 2001, with only one dating to 1959. By comparison, the years of incorporation for cooperating associations ranged from 1923 to 1961 (see table 6). Moreover, while the median date of incorporation for associations also is 1941, the median incorporation date for the friends groups is 1995. Contributing to the establishment of new friends groups is recent legislation that directed the National Park Foundation to design a program fostering fund-raising at individual park units and specified that program implementation include assisting in the creation of local nonprofit groups. The importance of nonprofit support varied considerably across parks. For example, Golden Gate NP received over $10 million in aid in fiscal year 2001, the highest contribution by a cooperating association that year, while Voyageurs NP received $3,233 from its cooperating association, the lowest financial contribution to a park that year. Similarly, one friends groups affiliated with the Statue of Liberty NM contributed over $8 million to the park, while 34 friends groups reported zero financial contributions to their affiliated parks in fiscal year 2001. Appendixes IV and V provide detailed revenue and contribution information for cooperating associations and friends groups, respectively. In addition to the financial contributions they make to parks each year, cooperating associations and friends groups also hold over $200 million in accumulated net assets that are potentially available for future contributions to parks. According to tax data for 2001, friends groups retained over 60 percent of these accumulated assets. More precisely, the net assets of friends groups totaled $125 million in 2001, according to data collected for over two-thirds of the groups, including the largest friends groups (see app. V).