Citywide Volunteer Days in Parks

By Charlie McCabe

Volunteer roles in park maintenance continue to evolve with the ongoing efforts of public park agencies and park nonprofits working together. Many things have changed since the initial release of my Partners for Parks Report Series in 2024, so I’ll be covering some of the new developments in this blog over the next month or two. Today’s topic: citywide volunteer days in parks.

The idea of a citywide park volunteer day is not new: In 1995, the City Parks Foundation and the NYC Parks Department introduced It’s My Park Day—spring and fall dates when volunteer groups cleaned, painted, planted, assembled, and programmed in their adopted parks. It’s My Park Day grew quickly, and now the umbrella Partnerships for Parks program offers organizational assistance, grant funding, and a variety of training and coaching programs for volunteer leaders in parks. Tens of thousands of volunteers participate in hundreds of volunteer projects^[i] that take place throughout the year in city parks across all five boroughs.  

The Austin Parks Foundation (APF) borrowed this same model beginning in 2003 with their own version of It’s My Park Day.^[ii] Taking place twice a year in March and October, dozens of Austin adopt-a-park groups plan and run simultaneous volunteer projects on a designated workday. The Foundation manages publicity, recruitment, and registration of volunteers, the lending of tools and supplies, and the creation and distribution of a signature commemorative T-shirt for all volunteers.

When I joined APF in 2005, our initial goal was to have at least 1,000 volunteers working on 20 projects in a single day once a year. We quickly reached 1,500 volunteers and 30 projects by 2011, and the Spring 2026 It’s My Park Day saw 4,521 volunteers working on 108 projects. Statistics for the most recent day include spreading 1,027 cubic yards of mulch (nearly two square miles’ worth!) and collecting 16,150 pounds of trash. Based on the value of volunteer labor compiled by Independent Sector, that’s $455,682 of donated labor to the Austin parks system. The table below shows the last three years of growth, plus Spring 2026 totals, along with the three-year average and the grand totals for all three years.

Year	Projects Tackled	People Volunteering	Cubic Yards of Mulch	Pounds of Trash	Value of labor
Spring 2026	108	4,521	1,027	16,150	$455,682
Spring & Fall 2025	175	6700	1,684	25,820	$668,864
Spring & Fall 2024	190	6,673	1,529	76,750	$650,000
Spring & Fall 2023	193	6,241		96,170	$598,012
Grand Totals	666	24,135	4,240	214,890	$2,372,558
Averages	166.5	6,034	1,413	53,723	$593,140

In Philadelphia, the Fairmount Parks Conservancy has a similar approach with spring and fall volunteer days operating under the Love Your Park banner. Working in partnership with the nonprofit Park Friends Network and Philadelphia Parks and Recreation, they host a separate loveyourpark.org branded site for volunteers and park adopter groups, currently totaling over 140 separate adopter groups.

A notable difference is that in May, Love Your Park is a nine-day series of events, encompassing two weekends and a work week, while in Fall, it is a 3-day (Friday through Sunday) sequence of events.

In the Fall of 2025, over 1,200 volunteers worked on projects in 109 parks planting 226 trees, 39 shrubs, and 2,900 flowering plants. They collected 377 and 1964 brown bags with organic debris. There is usually a signature park project which draws around 100 volunteers and is the “press-friendly” event.  The table below shows the last few years of data for Love Your Park.

	Volun-teers	Parks	Events	Trees	Shrubs	Plants / bulbs	Mulch (cu yards)	Bags of Trash	Bags of Organic debris
Spring 2026	1,066					2,395	321	800
Fall 2025	1200	109	109	226	39	2,900		377	1964
Spring 2025	1300	100	105	32	77	7,360	296	483	683
Fall 2024	1760	110	110	289		4,600		608	40 tons of leaves
Spring 2024	1,400	110		141	459			939	1,228
Fall 2023	1,750	200		300		1,550		477	1880

The Chicago Parks Foundation, the citywide nonprofit partner of the Chicago Parks District, hosts the annual It’s Your Park Day, along with a summer season of Pitch in for the Parks.  Celebrating their 10^th year in 2025, more than 2,700 volunteers participated at 236 events over the season.

Several state park agencies offer similar park volunteering efforts around a specific time of the year.

New York State Parks has I Love My Park Day, organized by the statewide nonprofit partner, Parks & Trail New York. This event is now partnered with Riverkeeper Sweep in a growing number of locations along the Hudson and on Long Island. They also do a Canal Clean Sweep Day, Adirondack and Catskill Park Day, and Wildlife Day. In 2025, I Love My Park Day logged 15,369 hours contributed by 5,123 volunteers, removing 41,032 pounds of trash, 1,845 invasive plants, and creating or maintaining 354 gardens. In 2026, the initial results show that more than 5,000 volunteers came out and worked at over 160 locations on a single day, May 2^nd.

In Massachusetts, the State’s Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) hosts an annual Park Serve Day, which runs over several weekends around Earth Day, working with local friends’ groups to host between 40 and 60 events including planting, trail maintenance, debris cleanup, and more. These events draw several thousand volunteers.

Finally, two national nonprofits organize events around a single day for a wide variety of parks and public spaces. The American Hiking Society hosts National Trails Day on the first Saturday of June annually. Their motto is “Any trail, anywhere.” National Trails Day aims to get people out enjoying trails while also giving back through volunteering. In 2025, over 66,688 people took part in an activity in 943 locations across the United States and Canada. Of those, more than 6,057 volunteers worked on building or maintaining 758 miles of trails.

Similarly, the National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF) organizes National Public Lands Day on the last Saturday in September. Events can take place on any public lands across the US. In 2025, over 55,550 volunteers participated in 916 events, resulting in 328,105 hours donated, worth a total of $9.4 million.

These events are not only good for the park systems that they support, but they also build awareness for the public park agencies and their supporting nonprofit organizations, underscoring the persistent needs of the city park systems. They are also an excellent introductory activity, an “ice-breaker” that puts park friends groups into the spotlight to promote their ongoing work throughout the year, recruiting both additional volunteers and donors to the cause.

^[i] - City Parks Foundation – Partnerships for Parks – upcoming It’s My Park events - https://cityparksfoundation.org/volunteer-its-my-park/

^[ii] - For full transparency, I served as Executive Director of the Austin Parks Foundation from 2005-2012 and focused on making It’s My Park Day our annual signature event.  It's gotten much bigger and more frequent in the 14 years since I moved away from Austin.