Empowering organizations that bring people to the parks
Situated between majestic Puget Sound and the iconic Cascade mountains, King County, Wash., is home to some of the most beautiful landscapes in the country. Thousands of parks of all sizes dot the county, home to 2.3 million people, but these public open spaces are not distributed equitably. One of the many ways King County Parks seeks to make outdoor spaces more equitable is through grants issued directly to the communities with the least access.
Investing In Community
One of the department’s grant programs, the Healthy Communities and Parks Fund (established in 2020), designates $10 million in grant funding over six years for cities, towns, tribal organizations, and community-based organizations to “increase access to and the use of parks, open space, and public recreation facilities in underserved communities.”
Over the last three years, the Healthy Communities and Parks Fund has awarded $6.7 million to 106 projects across King County, ranging in size from a $10,000 grant to support adaptive hiking programs for people with disabilities to a $225,000 award to a Latino nonprofit building capacity in its mission to create a community center and recreation space.
By far, the most common request the fund receives is for programming. The hundreds of organizations that apply each year have strong ties to their communities and are experts in building programs that are responsive to local needs. Where they need help is in funding the staff, equipment, transportation, and facility access to make these programs possible.
This grant program has become one of the department’s most popular, with 27 percent growth in the number of applicants in the last three years. This is largely because it is available to nonprofit organizations and is designed to support the needs of underserved communities, a mission many nonprofits share. In 2024, 150 applicants requested a combined $16.9 million in funding. Over 85 percent of these applicants came from community-based organizations. Nonprofits and fiscally sponsored organizations made up over 90 percent of successful applicants in 2023 and 100 percent in 2024. With only 16 percent of projects funded in 2024, it is clear that more funding is needed in this arena to help community organizations connect people with parks and the outdoors.
One organization that has demonstrated repeated impact in its community is After-School All-Stars Puget Sound, which received $400,000 over the last two years. Its Recreation & Wellness for Underserved Youth program provides hundreds of middle-schoolers across three low-income school districts with free after-school programs that extend into summer. In recent months, the organization has hosted a dance/cheer team, a skateboarding club, and martial arts classes. In some schools, students can choose between activities like cooking class or indoor hockey.
“I like that we get to eat right after we cook,” says Beheshta, a sixth-grade participant. “It's nice because the food is warm, and there is a lot of it. It's fun to get to play in the kitchen."
Grantees can also create an outsized impact with relatively small grant awards. In 2022, the department awarded four different organizations roughly $15,000 each to provide swim lessons for residents. Each of these organizations has strong ties to specific communities that have had inequitable access to swim-safety instruction. With the funds, they were able to design programs to teach kids how to swim while utilizing instructors who looked like the participants and who were from their community. These four swim programs taught over 500 people to swim, mostly underserved youth.
The following comments from happy children and parents who experienced programs at No More Under and SPLASHForward! indicate the level of impact:
"I improved swimming the most. I also now know how to flip, float, and relax and how to kayak."
"My favorite parts of the camp were my swim teacher, who made it fun to swim, and the staff were cool."
“As a mom of three, I’m so thankful for this opportunity and all these lessons.”
“He loved it a lot, he lost his fear a lot, and he really liked attending. He still asks me to take him to his swimming classes.”
After 106 Healthy Communities and Parks Fund grants and more to come this year, department leaders have learned a great deal from working with community partners about how to improve their experience and make the process more equitable.
Infusing Equity From Application To Closeout
Since the department started accepting Levy grant applications in 2021, leaders have been making equity-focused improvements to direct funding to the communities that need it most, and help them navigate what can be a confusing grantee process. Five of the most notable improvements include:
Free Consultants For Small Organizations: The majority of applicants are small, community-based organizations that may not have a dedicated grant writer. In 2023, King County Parks started a free program to provide these organizations with an option to work with an independent consultant who could help them build a stronger application for their proposal. Any organization with an annual budget of less than $4 million and fewer than 20 full-time employees can request a consultant. Active grantees who fit the “small organization” criteria can request a Capacity Building Consultant to help advise on an area of organizational management, such as financial planning, communications, or human resources.
Robust Resources And Translated Materials: The organizations that King County Parks works with asked for more written resources, more frequent opportunities to ask questions, and information that’s available in multiple languages. In response, the department publishes the full application, an application guide, and a robust FAQ at least a month before applications open. Leaders also hold weekly office hours for the month leading up to application opening and host a series of workshops about the grant programs, which are open to the public and accessible virtually and in-person. All written resources are available in Spanish, and applicants can request translation into other languages. Going forward, the department’s hope is to provide resources in more priority languages as a standard.
ESJ-Weighted Scoring And Advisory Committee Training: For all Levy grants, applications are scored by advisory committees comprised of public officials and members of local community organizations. All committee members receive anti-bias training and use a standardized evaluation rubric; those who are eligible receive a stipend for their contributions. The evaluation rubric is made available to applicants ahead of time to inform their proposals. One change made in 2024 was to increase the weighting of the Equity & Social Justice score from 30 to 40 percent, with the remainder made of 50 percent Project Details and 10 percent Budget & Resources. These policies resulted in an Advisory Committee that was well-trained to equitably score applications, and a scoring system weighted more toward equitable outcomes.
Grantee Orientation And Toolkit: Many grantees are navigating the world of government grants for the first time, so the department has taken steps to onboard organizations in a way that gives them the tools to effectively navigate the process. When they are first notified of an award, grantees receive a detailed toolkit that outlines the process of contracting, invoicing, and reporting. They are also given access to a constantly evolving FAQ document containing common grantee questions. Park staff members also hold a series of virtual webinars during which new grantees can learn more about the grant process and ask questions. Grantees are then paired with a grant manager, with whom they will have the option of scheduling a 1-on-1 meeting. The feedback from new grantees is that these resources make navigating government grants less intimidating and help them access their awards more quickly.
Advanced Payments For Small Organizations: All King County Parks grant programs are paid using reimbursements, but leaders have received feedback from many small organizations that this is a barrier to getting funded programs off the ground. To address this in 2023, the department introduced the option for small organizations (annual budget of less than $4 million and fewer than 20 full-time employees) to request an advanced payment of up to $15,000 to get a project started. For many small Healthy Communities and Parks Fund awards, this means the entire award is paid as soon as the grantee signs the contract, allowing them to focus on delivering meaningful services to their communities.
Departmental leaders have received a great deal of helpful feedback from community partners and have taken steps to improve their experience with King County Parks during the grant period. Now, at the end of the six-year Levy grants, the team is excited about how the structural improvements will aid future grant programs—and deliver funding where it is most needed.
