STORIES
TPL’s New Strategic Plan Is All About Outcomes
Our next five-year strategic plan amplifies something that’s been true about TPL for a long time: we’re not just in the business of creating parks and protecting land. We’re in the business of connection. Parks, schoolyards, trails, and land connect us to each other, to nature and to the power of place.
Published September 5, 2025
For 53 years, our mission hasn’t wavered: to create parks and protect land so all Americans can access inspiring green spaces that make us healthier and happier. We’ve remained steadfast but nimble. Our last strategic plan was guided by a defined and ambitious set of commitments to health, access, climate resilience and community that underpinned our programmatic initiatives. Now, after connecting nearly 10 million people to 5,504 green spaces across more than 4 million acres of land and securing $110 billion in public funding, we’re embarking on our next five-year strategic plan. It will carry our work forward with renewed purpose and a heightened focus on community-centered outcomes—that is, the benefits of our work—and how to extend them to even more places.
Every day, we lose 6,000 acres of land to real estate development. We live in a country where one in three people lacks access to a public green space within a 10-minute walk of home. Our state and national parks are experiencing record-breaking demand in the face of funding and staffing cuts. Too many school children spend recess—which might be their only outdoor time—in scorching schoolyards that look more like parking lots than playgrounds. All this while the weather extremes of the climate crisis upend communities and endanger public health.
Our new strategic plan affirms our commitment to a community-driven process in which we can connect everyone to the outdoors, ensuring access for generations to come.
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