In 2008, as part of a parks study trip, I visited the US and met with both the Seattle and San Francisco Parks Foundations.

Something that struck me was how the independent foundations really engendered community trust and support (both physical and fiscal): they simply supported parks for what they are: spaces for the whole of the community.

Back in Bournemouth, inspired by the things I’d seen abroad, I discussed the idea of setting up a foundation with colleagues, but it never really got beyond a discussion, there were always too many other things to do. When this Rethinking Parks programme came up we knew we had to apply, and my colleague Mark Holloway, Countryside Project Manager, wrote our bid having just completed a project which was part funded through donations.

On being awarded funding to take part in the programme, the main task for us initially was to establish the Foundation as a company and as a charity, and so we had to recruit trustees. The advice we were given was, at this stage, to hand pick appropriate people rather than to publicly advertise and it wasn’t until the end of 2014 that we had enough trustees to be able to set up the company and the charity. We received our charity number in early January 2015 after having been grilled by the Charities Commission on how the charity would be separate and distinct from the council.

This was actually made more difficult by the fact that, in order to share the workload in getting the charity set up, Mark and I have become trustees. In doing this, it’s important that we avoid any conflicts of interest, at the same time as ensuring we don’t overload trustees as soon as they sign up to volunteer. In order to manage this we have to ensure that there is a quorum of trustees big enough to always out vote Mark and I comfortably. We’ll also declare a conflict of interest on some issues and step out of voting. On the positive side, we can offer lots of insight, support and advice as the Foundation gets going – we’re both Bournemouth residents with families and friends across the town which helps. The Charity Commission are happy with our approach at the moment.

The other key task we had was to recruit a project manager to manage to day-to-day aspects of the project, and Theresa McManus started in post mid-January. Since then we have commissioned the development of a website including a donation platform, and branding for the Foundation. We have set up accounts on a range of social media platforms and have established an interim landing page for the website. We expect to have the website delivered by late April / early May, and plan to have launched the new site before Whitsun week, when outdoor activities start to become more popular. We are developing detailed marketing and communication plans alongside this.

When the Bournemouth Parks Foundation is launched with its new website, we’ll be offering people the opportunity to donate online, either to specific projects or to one of 7 project themes, e.g. arts and culture, or sports. They will also be able to donate through a commemorative gift or by leaving a legacy in a will. We’ll also be offering people the opportunity to donate their time, and for businesses to engage as potential sponsors.

In addition to this, we’re working on developing three park based installations to trial on site instant digital giving. One example is in aid of a project to replace Bournemouth Gardens’ aging aviary, a home for rescued cage-birds. It’ll include a large sculptured parrot incorporating information to enable donation via text, web link or swiping a smart phone; the parrot might be enabled to speak whenever a donation occurs or to encourage donation – ‘pieces of eight’ etc. We’re not going to forget cash donations and will allow this too. We hope this will provide a good testing ground to compare the results of the different donation prompts.

There’s lots more work to do on areas such as what donor benefits we can offer. We're thinking that a campaign to promote a sense of attachment to your local park (at the moment of highest emotion e.g. after a great day out) will lead to people wanting to give something back, but we may find that we need to trial the effect of incentives as well as the different donation options.