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Marty Parichand from Mill City Park in Franklin presents at the Grant Writing and Fundraising workshop on June 5th at the McLane Audubon Center in Concord.
Every year in New Hampshire, a wide variety of trail and recreation groups across the state are working hard to build, maintain, and improve recreational trails. These trails are beneficial for the health and well being of New Hampshire people, while also potentially contributing to the local economy and playing key roles in conservation efforts. The collective knowledge of these groups is impressive, and yet they don’t always have opportunities to come together, share ideas, and find ways to collaborate.
Last summer, UNH Extension Community & Economic Development and Natural Resources specialists launched the “Developing Interconnections for Regional Trails” (a.k.a. “DIRT”) project, along with a team of UNH faculty and external organization and agency partners. This project, supported by the UNH Collaborative Research Excellence Initiative, brings together outdoor recreation stakeholders to create cross-organizational educational and networking opportunities, develop workforce development strategies, and conduct research on how to best facilitate collaboration and capacity-building across trail and recreation groups.
In early June of 2024, the DIRT team wrapped up the last of their planned webinars and workshops. All of these educational events had been developed to directly address areas of need identified by trail and recreation organizations in Belknap and Merrimack counties in Fall 2023. Across the 3 UNH-hosted webinars and 3 in-person workshops, DIRT engaged 234 individuals in educational programming. These participants represented affiliations with at least:
Tim Blagden from the Concord-Lake Sunapee Rail Trail leads a roundtable discussion with Michael Polizzotti from UNH Extension on grant calendars and multi-year planning at the Grant Writing and Fundraising Workshop, June 5th.
- 53 nonprofit organizations and chapters, coalitions, and other community groups
- 33 New Hampshire town/city offices, committees, and commissions
- 17 trails, recreation, or tourism related businesses
- 9 state offices and agencies
- 4 divisions and departments of UNH
The DIRT webinars and in-person workshops culminated on June 5th in a full-day session on grant writing and fundraising for trails and recreation projects, hosted at the scenic McLean Audubon Center in Concord. Representatives from over 40 organizations, agencies, municipalities, and recreation-serving businesses networked and learned about resources and strategies to help secure funding for planning, designing, managing, and constructing capital improvements to outdoor recreation amenities. Speakers included representatives from funding agencies as well as staff and volunteers from trail management organizations and entities who have successfully undertaken grant writing and fundraising campaigns. Hearing both the funder's and the applicant’s perspectives provided well-rounded insights. This helped to create a foundation of knowledge for topic-specific afternoon round tables, in which participants presented their project ideas and received guidance from subject matter experts and peers. Participants hopefully completed the DIRT program better prepared to take their projects to the next level.
With the 2024 workshops and webinars complete, the DIRT team will next focus on the project’s research component. Soon, they will email a survey to all program participants to learn more about their experiences with the DIRT program and about how organizations or institutions like UNH can help build capacity among trail and recreation groups. The team will then interview select trail organization leaders about their experiences and further suggestions. Extension specialist and Recreation Management and Policy affiliated faculty member Jada Lindblom recently shared the DIRT project with other researchers at the Travel and Tourism Research Association’s Annual International Conference in Burlington, VT. A 6-minute video presentation from this conference on DIRT’s intersections with tourism and destination development is available to view online. The DIRT team plans to share a full report of research findings at the end of the year.
If you’d like to learn more about DIRT, visit the project website at https://sites.usnh.edu/dirt/.
You can also learn more about past DIRT happenings in these previous UNH Extension blog articles:
“Building Trails and Finding Connections with DIRT” (Sep 2023)
“Getting to Work with DIRT” (Mar 2024)
