How the giveback works

Parks Project partners directly with park conservancies. Every tee, tote, and fleece funds trail restoration, youth programs, and wildlife stewardship in a specific park. Not a round-up at checkout — built into the price.

Most “give back” brands work one of two ways: a flat percentage of sales gets donated to a general fund, or a round-up prompt pops up at checkout. Both of those can work. Neither is what Parks Project does.

The model

Parks Project partners directly with more than 45 park conservancies across the country — the nonprofits that work alongside the National Park Service and do the actual ground-level work inside the parks. Trail maintenance. Habitat restoration. Volunteer coordination. Youth programs. Wildlife monitoring. The conservancy decides which projects need funding most urgently. Parks Project writes the check.

The giveback isn’t a round-up. It isn’t optional. It’s built into the price of the product. Buy a Yosemite tee, money goes to the Yosemite Conservancy. Buy a fleece with a Glacier print, money goes to the Glacier National Park Conservancy. Yellowstone Forever. Sequoia Parks Conservancy. On and on.

Why that structure matters

Percentage-donation models pool the money first. By the time it reaches the trail, a chunk has been absorbed by administrative overhead, and donors don’t know which park got what. Parks Project bypasses the pool. The conservancy for the specific park on the product you bought gets the funding directly — and because it’s one-to-one, the impact is traceable.

What it’s actually funded

Parks Project has given back over $2.7 million to parklands since 2014. Real projects, not vague intentions:

• Trail maintenance across Yosemite’s roughly 800 miles of volunteer-maintained backcountry
• Invasive species removal in the Everglades that was threatening the alligator population
• Youth engagement and Park Champion programs to get the next generation into the outdoors
• Habitat restoration in Sequoia, wildlife work in Yellowstone, cleanup days in parks across the country

These aren’t line items on a marketing page. They’re projects tracked by the conservancies doing the work.

Why we carry it

Every outdoor brand claims to care about nature. Parks Project shows its math: public donations, specific conservancy partners, tracked projects, a Certified B Corp structure, recycled and organic materials. You could wear the stuff without the giveback story and it’d still work — it’s just good clothing, well-made, built to last more than a season.

But the giveback is the point. That’s why we carry it.

Shop Parks Project →

— The Alpinistas Team