Nominate Park Heroes for Recognition and Prizes
at the Fourth Annual Stewardship Awards Luncheon

The Neighborhood Parks Council is pleased to announce our fourth round of awards for park groups that have accomplished extraordinary things in their neighborhood parks.  Three awards are offered:  Grand Prize of $2500, second is $1500 and third is $1000.

Park group efforts in San Francisco are critical to the upkeep, restoration, beauty and usability of our parks.  The energy, strength and determination of our City’s residents to help care for and improve our beloved parks make volunteers one of San Francisco’s greatest civic assets.

Please help us acknowledge this tremendous commitment of volunteers by nominating your park group or another that you think has done outstanding work.  The prizes recognize effort in any or all of the following categories:  active park workdays, beautification successes, organizing volunteers, government and civic advocacy, fundraising, capital improvements and use of ParkScan.org.

Please distribute the nomination forms widely.  Awards will be given at the Annual Stewardship Awards Luncheon on May 14th at Mission Bay Community Center at noon.

PLEASE RETURN THE NOMINATION FORMS AND ALL SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS TO NPC PRIOR TO APRIL 14, 2008. 
Additional forms can be downloaded on the NPC Website
 www.sfnpc.org

Submit to:  Meredith Thomas, Program Manager
mthomas@sfnpc.org
Fax:  415-703-0889
451 Hayes St, Second Floor
San Francisco, Ca  94102

Recognizing Outstanding Park Groups:
Recognizes efforts in any or all of the following: active park workdays, beautification successes, organizing volunteers, government and civic advocacy, fundraising, capital improvements and ParkScan.org activity.

**This form and attached documents should be retuned to NPC prior to April 14, 2008 to ensure the recommended group receives full awards consideration.**

Nominated Park Group:
Friends of Upper Douglass Dog Park

Recommended By:
William Weil

The Upper Douglass Dog Park has not been a priority within Park and Rec for resources or funding.  No money was included for this park in the recent park bond issue.  There has been more dirt than grass in the park and the fence needed mending.

 But anyone who has ever walked down 24th Street knows that Noe Valley loves its dogs, as do the residents of Diamond Heights, Glen Park and Twin Peaks.

Rather than envy the (once) lush lawns and new equipment at Stern Grove, the park patrons got working and got organizing.  In barely a year, we:

1. Formed Friends of Upper Douglass Dog Park (FUDDP), which now has 128 members.
2. Established a web site fuddp.org.
3. Joined groundspring.org for donations.
4. Set up clean-up days that regularly get 20-30 people to give up their Saturday mornings to help the park.  This work included fence repair, brush clearing resodding as well as general clean-up.
5. Initiated a reseeding program to turn the dirt into grass.  Built and maintained the fence around the seeded area.
6. Managed to get Stern Grove’s old Bulletin Board installed.
7. Put together Dogtoberfest: a major fundraiser/faire in October that attracted 100-200 people.  A grand time was had by all.  We got local merchants involved who donated prizes and we sold drawing  tickets.  We ended up with so many prizes that at the end we were actually turning away prizes.  For a new group, working together for the first time in a large, concerted effort, this was an amazing success that demonstrated the hard work and commitment of the group.
8. Overall raised over $11,000 for park improvements.  This includes individual donations, Dogtoberfest, and a $5,000 grant.  I doubt any other group could raise this kind on money in its first year without some rich benefactors.  We did it with no large donations, other than the grant.
9. Polled the membership to determine the priorities for money raised.  First priority is a water fountain, which has been ordered. Next is to complete the fence with a double gate.
10. FUDDP named Volunteer of the Month for January, 2008 by the Neighborhood Parks Council.

March 29 is a good example of FUDDP in action.  Although this was billed as a clean-up day, most of the work was carting and spreading two truckloads of soil to fill in holes and prepare areas of the park for reseeding, then fencing it in.

We had three wheelbarrows going continuously and we had so many volunteers shoveling and spreading that we could have used more wheelbarrows.  Then we built a 250-foot fence around the area to be reseeded.  FUDDP members supplied some of the fencing materials and stayed extra to reinforce the fence so it could stand the rigors of wayward dogs.

As an aside, the better we can fix up Upper Douglass Dog Park, the more we can induce other people to use it instead of letting their dogs off-leash (illegally) at nearby Christopher Playground.

                    
The dirt                                             Some of the shovelers

                     
One of the wheelbarrows                  One of the spreaders

             
The start of the fence                        The fence