The National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA) hired Fifth Estate Communications to build a toolkit that would help members explain the link between parks and community health — especially to to elected officials weighing funding priorities. In a time of tight budgets and community health problems on the rise, it’s crucial that communities understand the direct correlation.
Because NRPA is a national association with members from recreation and park departments across the country, Fifth Estate quickly determined that different departments needed different tools. All departments, however, were invested in capitalizing on the link between parks and health. After conversations with on-the-ground Recreation and Park officials, as well as outside stakeholders, Fifth Estate developed a toolkit with the most commonly requested tools, including fact sheets, presentation slides, talking points, a social media calendar, and an infographic library.
The toolkit provides recreation and parks officials with what they told us they needed: A one-stop shop that can make a compelling case that everyone intuitively knows is true, but that requires hard evidence to get the attention of the people writing the budgets.
