Oct. 20, 2022

In the early days of Mayor Paul TenHaken’s administration, the new mayor challenged each department head to set stretch goals.

As he put it, “throw the buoy way out there,” said Don Kearney, the city’s director of parks and recreation.

In the case of the Sioux Falls Parks & Recreation Department, that meant an eight-digit reach: Earn $10 million in private support for the department by 2022.

“We thought we could do $7 million, but we increased it to $10 million, and now we’ve exceeded that,” Kearney said.

“And we could double that to over $20 million by the end of the year.”

These aren’t all big-ticket donations, either.

The $10 million doesn’t even count the private support from the Garry and Dianne Jacobson family for the downtown Jacobson Plaza ice ribbon and accessible playground or the large fundraising campaign behind the new lion exhibit coming to the Great Plains Zoo.

“A big chunk of it is sponsorships,” Kearney said. “These are annual contributions they make over time, so they add up to quite a bit.”

Those include naming sponsorships, such as the Midco Aquatic Center, smaller sponsors within the building including Papa John’s and Parkway Orthodontics and supporters at Great Bear Ski Valley, including Schulte Subaru.

Other contributions came in the form of land, such as an extension of the west-side Family Park.

Gifts for specific improvements added up too, including the GreatLIFE Cares Foundation, which made the lead gift for tennis courts at Tomar Park, and contributions to the future skate park and improvements at Hayward Park.

Labor counts too – including from volunteers and inmates. Kearney estimates their help has saved the city more than $300,000 over the past few years.

“We can calculate that if a group wants to bring people out and clean up the river or paint tables,” he said.

Last year, the Sioux Falls Parks Foundation was organized as an affiliate of the Sioux Falls Area Community Foundation.

“There’s a lot of interest,” said Jennifer Kirby, who chairs the foundation’s advisory board. “It all comes down to finding the actual project that will mesh with a donor’s passion.”

For Kirby and her husband, Joe, that was a dog park. They contributed to build the Kirby Dog Park at For Sod and fulfill a long hope of adding one downtown.

“In the parks, there are so many options there’s a lot of opportunity,” she said. “But I think people realize how vitally important the parks are to our quality of life in Sioux Falls, and because of that, they seem interested and open to providing support.”

Her group held an informational event for donors last month and has been meeting individually to gauge interest in specific projects.

Future opportunities for philanthropy could arise out of the city’s planned investments in several swimming pools, potentially indoor recreation projects and bike trail expansion.

“Certainly, we have pool naming opportunities coming up in the future with these replacements,” Kearney said. “There’s opportunities at Harmodon Park for field turf, if people had an interest in pickleball there’s an interest in potentially doing more courts, so there’s a bunch of different ideas.”

The Falls Park master plan also likely will produce an entire additional slate of possibilities.

“I’m so excited about the direction the Parks Department is headed in Sioux Falls,” Kirby said. “They know they need to keep up with current commitments, but they’re also forward-thinking, and it’s a real treat to work with them.”