Friends of Community Parks is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization founded in 2025. We are registered with the Oregon Secretary of State as an Oregon public benefit corporation and as an Oregon Charity with the Oregon Department of Justice. 

Our charitable purpose is to support and enhance the public parks and recreational areas of Independence and Monmouth, ensuring they remain vibrant, accessible, and well-maintained spaces for the health, wellness, and enjoyment of all community members.

Our all-volunteer seven member Board of Directors is made up of community members that live in the greater Independence and Monmouth communities, which we define in our Bylaws as being within the 97351 and 97361 zip codes. Our current board has three members that live in Independence, two that live in Monmouth and two that live in Polk County. Our Board Members, including a couple that were born here, have lived, worked and contributed in this community for between 10 and 50+ years!  

Friends of Community Parks (“FCP”) engages in grantmaking in pursuit of our charitable purpose. Under our Grantmaking Policy, FCP may provide grants to local nonprofit organizations, the local school district, and the cities of Independence and Monmouth, Oregon for projects that are aligned with our charitable purpose. FCP does not make grants to individuals.

Grants funded by FCP must benefit the residents of Independence and Monmouth, Oregon, defined in our Bylaws as being physically located within the 97351 and 97361 zip codes.

The timing of our grants is based on the timing of our fundraising calendar. Because our largest fundraising event is Independence Days, we began our 2026 grantmaking cycle on August 5th, at the first regular board meeting after the Independence Days event. This timing allows us to consider accurate financial information based on all bills associated with the event being paid or scheduled for payment. 

Because 2026 is our first year making grants, we had to go through some internal governance steps to prepare. The most important of these steps was formally adopting our Grantmaking Policy. Once that Policy was adopted, we were able to explore different projects that we had interest in. This year, the Board agreed to fund projects in both Independence and Monmouth and we allocated a total dollar amount for all grants to be awarded during 2026. This is just the first step in the annual process – when the allocation is done the underlying projects have not yet been identified.

The next step in the grantmaking process is to propose a specific grant to an eligible organization. These proposals are based on our understanding of the needs and goals of the organizations as stated in their Parks Master Plans or through exploratory meetings with the organization. For our 2026 grant cycle, after a series of exploratory conversations to understand the areas of need, we awarded a grant of $30,000 to the City of Independence to reopen and maintain park services in Riverview Park and Independence Landing through 12/31/2026. We are currently in the process of setting up exploratory meetings with the City of Monmouth to understand opportunities in their park system. We expect to announce a grant award to the City of Monmouth later this year.  

Next year we will also have an option for eligible organizations to apply for grants that are consistent with our charitable purpose. Information about that process will be posted on the FCP website in January 2027.

One of the Guiding Principals that is included in the Memorandum of Understanding that FCP signed with the City of Independence is that FCP “will serve as an additive funder for City parks and recreational spaces, rather than supplanting existing City funding obligations.” This means that FCP will not award a grant to cover expenses that the city already has funded. That would be a needless windfall for the City. Once the referendum signatures were verified, however, the Community Services and Parks Fee funding that was created by ordinance to keep the parks, library and museums operating was no longer funded. Once that point was reached, FCP was able to propose a grant to partially fund the parks because they were no longer funded by the City.

The timing worked like this: After formally adopting our Grantmaking Policy, when the Board began discussing potential projects in mid-August, the Board was aware that a referendum had been submitted to Polk County Elections regarding the Community Services and Parks Fee, but the signatures had not yet been validated by the Polk County Clerk. The Board agreed that it needed to understand whether the referendum was validated before proposing any grants. If we awarded a grant for park services that were already funded (if the referendum wasn’t validated), we wouldn’t be following our own policies and agreements. We needed to wait before proposing and awarding grant funds under these circumstances.  

On Friday, August 21st the Board confirmed that the signatures had been validated and that the community would have the opportunity to vote in November whether to implement the Community Services and Parks Fee. Over that weekend, our all-volunteer Board worked internally on terms for a grant proposal to cover operating costs for Riverview Park. We identified Riverview Park as the best use of our grant funding because it is the most visited park in the City and, in our opinion, is the heart of the Independence park system.   

On Sunday, August 23rd, the Board approved a Grant Proposal to the City of Independence. That proposal was emailed on Monday August 24th and accepted by the City on the next day. Preparations for the fencing to come down at Riverview Park and Independence Landing occurred on Wednesday the 26th. Notifications to be shared with all of the necessary parties were also prepared on that day. On Thursday, August 27th the grant was announced to the community through social media and News Releases. That same day the fences started coming down.   

Even though this was a difficult week for our community, we saw evidence that we can do great things when we work together.  <3 

FCP is an independent nonprofit organization and the FCP Board alone determines how grant funds will be awarded. Our board members reside in Independence, Monmouth and in unincorporated Polk County within the 97351 and 97361 zip codes. We come from all walks of life. We do this work as unpaid volunteers – just because we are passionate about our community. We work together to support programs that support the residents of Independence and Monmouth. 

The City did not approach us at any time to provide these funds. We determined the need we wanted to address and the funds we wanted to allocate to address that need. If the referendum had not been validated, we might still have made a grant to the City, but it would have been for something completely different – like updating playground equipment or assisting with trail renovations. 

Alternatively, because our charitable purpose covers parks and recreational areas in both Independence and Monmouth, we could have chosen to invest grant funds outside of Independence. 

Grantmaking is a deliberative process and needs change as facts and circumstances change. The FCP Board awarded this grant to the City of Independence because under the current conditions we are facing as a community, this was the most impactful thing we could do to serve the residents of this community. 

Friends of Community Parks (“FCP”) has a three-year loan with the City of Independence. The loan was negotiated as part of the agreement to take over planning and execution of Independence Days, as FCP would not have had enough time to raise the money and pay the pre-event expenses for a July 2026 event at the point the agreement was reached in late 2025. The funds for the loan came from the Economic Development fund and must be paid back into that fund.  

The first loan payment is due by December 1, 2026. FCP is on track to make that payment as scheduled. It is possible that FCP will pay the loan off after two years instead of three (to save interest), but that will depend on whether FCP is able to operate Independence Days as usual in 2027 and other economic factors. 

FCP has a fiscal plan through 12/31/2028 that was prepared as part of our 501(c)(3) application. The loan repayment schedule is already built into the fiscal plan. FCP will start fine tuning the 2027 budget soon, using the existing fiscal plan and 2026 financial results as a guideline. In August 2027, as part of our normal financial oversight process, FCP will assess whether it makes financial sense to pay the loan as agreed, or if the loan should be paid off early.  

The loan is a completely separate agreement from the grant and the funds related to each are in different parts of the City’s budget and FCP’s budget. 

It’s also important to note that FCP’s 2026 budget included an amount that could be utilized for grants, and the grant funds awarded to the City of Independence are within the budgeted amount. If Independence Days had not been as successful as it was, FCP would have had to reduce or eliminate the grant amounts available for 2026. Luckily, the community supported Independence Days 2026 and we have the funds needed to pay out the grants we budgeted for and also pay the expenses for Independence Days 2027. 

FCP’s charitable purpose is to be a grantmaking organization that supports and enhances the public parks and recreational areas of Independence and Monmouth, ensuring they remain vibrant, accessible, and well-maintained spaces for the health, wellness, and enjoyment of all community members. We do this through both grant funding and volunteer efforts. The Riverview Park grant is squarely within that purpose.