Strategic Planning Consultant

Request for Proposals

Statement of Purpose

Hunters Point Parks Conservancy (“HPPC”) seeks an experienced strategic planning consultant with experience working with small New York City-based nonprofit organizations and parks or environmental groups to create a five year strategic plan to help guide our expansion and increase our organizational capacity. We are particularly interested in consultants with experience with parks groups, small but growing nonprofits, small boards mid-transition from working to governing bodies or with experience with expanding geographic scope and into traditionally underserved communities.

Organizational Background 

HPPC enhances, activates, and advocates for the parks and waterfront of Long Island City, bringing communities together, protecting vital outdoor spaces, and ensuring lasting access for all.

In 1998 a group of concerned residents formed Friends of Gantry Plaza State Park with a goal to take care of our community’s parks, trees and natural areas. Since those early years we have grown tremendously, and following the opening of Hunter’s Point South Park we evolved into the Hunters Point Parks Conservancy in 2014. This change brought the introduction of park programming and more dedicated fundraising efforts, and allowed the hiring of the first full-time employee in 2018. In 2022, HPPC appointed its first executive director, and in 2023, we opened the Queens Landing Boathouse and Environmental Center. In 2025 we expanded to add a second full time employee. For the last several years, we’ve supplemented our staff with summer interns. 

Unlike most NYC-based parks nonprofits, we support parks in both the NY State and NYC Parks systems, and try to divide our resources between them, while also advocating for other public green spaces in the neighborhood.

HPPC now offers more than 230 free programs each year at Hunter’s Point South Park, Gantry Plaza State Park, and at our boathouse, and takes a lead in the community for advocating for local environmental wellness and park stewardship. 

Our current initiatives focus around 3 key areas: parks stewardship and advocacy, parks programming, and environmental education. 

Parks Stewardship and Advocacy – Barbara’s suggested revisions are below. 

HPPC was founded as a friends organization in 1998 that picked up litter and advocated the newly opened Gantry Plaza State Park. Today we run two  weekly volunteer gardening groups from May through September, bring out corporate volunteers, run occasional cleanups in the park’s saltmarsh and along the riprap. We generally allocate between $15,000 and $25,000 from our budget each year to equipment or plants and meet regularly with state and city staff. 


We advocate for funding at the state and city level. We also take the lead on neighborhood issues that will impact parks, including on the proposed new location of a ferry dock. In recent years, we advocated for parks and green space as part of OneLIC, a major rezoning that was approved in November 2025. Our Executive Director is on the One LIC committee and chairs its Parks Committee. 


Park Programming

We currently run a robust programming calendar in the summer, which includes:

  • four weekly fitness classes 

  • a daily kids program for six weeks in July and August

  • summer movie nights

  • outdoor art classes

  • monthly public paddles. 

These programs are our main touchpoints with the community, as they draw in the largest audiences and are the most visible. Over 20,000 people participate annually, and we receive positive feedback. 


Environmental Education

Our most recently added area of focus is environmental education. While we ran some environmental programs starting in 2018, we significantly expanded when the Queens Landing Boathouse and Environmental Center opened in October 2023. We now run:

  • multiple monthly public programs in the parks and at Queens Landing year-round

  • walks and education programs for students at local schools and afterschool programs

  • a small science lab with twice-weekly basic water quality testing on Newtown Creek

  • social media and newsletter posts about environmental topics

  • a partnership with Newtown Creek Alliance to host their field trips at the space


Learn more about our work at hunterspointparks.org


Why Now and What’s Next? 


HPPC went through a light strategic planning process in January 2020. While that was helpful to identify some important areas for improvement, the changes caused by the pandemic and new leadership mean we want to take a more robust approach to our next planning process. We’re happy to share the previous plan upon request, as well as the SWOT analysis from our most recent annual meeting.


Since its last plan, the organization has steadily increased its revenue, added a second full time staff member, and taken on a larger role in the community, especially with the OneLIC rezoning, which will extend the waterfront greenway and eventually connect to Queensbridge Park. We received some funding as part of that expansion, and are looking to grow into an organization with more capacity to serve the parks and public spaces beyond the Hunters Point waterfront. Our community board is third from the bottom for parks space per capita, and many of the local parks are deeply impacted by the ongoing underfunding of the NYC Parks Department, making advocacy from community groups more pressing. 


We have continued to steadily expand programming and the scope of our engagement in both parks and recently in the larger community, but our capacity and funding have not grown to match the expansion. We are also in an intersection of transitioning from a working to a governing board, which demands streamlining procedures and processes.  We also foresee  adding three to five more board members to better reflect the communities we serve and to bring needed skills to our ten member existing board, but have struggled to identify and recruit suitable candidates. 


HPPC is seeking a strategic planning consultant to:

  • Assist with developing a realistic, goal-oriented plan for the next 5 years with guidance on what will be needed to achieve those goals year over year. 

  • Provide support for capacity building and structure as we continue to expand and map out the best path to take to become a staff-driven organization. 

  • Offer recommendations on growing our staff (looking at a third full time hire versus consultants with specialized skills, for example)

  • Analyzing needed areas of board development, including composition and skills analysis, structure, recruitment, and best practices as we continue to transition from a more working board to an advising board. 

  • Analyzing how our current programming, finances, development and fundraising, and governance support (or fail to support) our mission and larger goals as an organization

  • Considering our current revenue streams and how they may need to change as we expand. 

  • Developing metrics to monitor progress and design and improve our capacity for self-correction.


We are aware that there may be major strategic questions and points of consideration not listed here, and want to work with the consultants to identify other areas of concern as part of this process. 


We anticipate that this process will be led by the Executive Director and Board President, with support from the Strategic Planning Committee.


Scope of Work


The consultant selected to develop our strategic plan will:


  • Meet with the Executive Director, Board Chair, Board Executive Committee/Strategic Planning Committee regularly to review the process and address questions as they arise. 

  • Attend an introductory meeting with the full board, then work with the ED and Strategic Planning Committee to develop a work plan for research and data collection to start the process. 

  • Conduct an analysis of our current mission, programming, and advocacy to consider how they support our larger organizational goals. 

  • Consider our current financial resources and strategies and analyze whether they are supporting our current work and future goals. 

  • With the ED and Strategic Planning Committee, decide on whether an interim board retreat would be needed/helpful, and help plan and execute said retreat. 

  • Lead the drafting, crafting, and editing of the strategic planning document with the ED and XXXXX board committee.

  • Work with the ED and board to develop an implementation plan with at least 3 years of benchmarking goals.

  • Present the final plan to the full board

  • Meet with the board and/or ED 2 times in the 6 to 12 months after the plan is delivered to discuss challenges and progress with implementation and provide feedback. 


The consultant is not expected to conduct external research, run focus groups, or develop surveys of stakeholders for this project.


Requirements and Timeline


We are looking for consultants with:

  • Expertise in nonprofit strategic planning and experience working with small nonprofits, ideally in the parks or environmental sectors in the New York City area. 

  • Expertise in guiding board and staff discussions and building consensus.

  • Ability to identify long and short term goals with benchmarks to meeting said goals.

  • Excellent organizational and communication skills.

  • Experience in nonprofit budgeting, financial tracking, development projections, and financial reporting and analysis. 

  • Ability to provide an independent perspective and challenge assumptions and thinking about programs, staffing, finance, and governance. 

  • Skills to create buy-in as part of a collaborative process 


We expect the RFP to be issued by October 23, 2026. Responses are due by November 18, 2026. We will host interviews with the top candidates to be completed by December 9, and plan to be in contract by December 15.


We anticipate the initial process to take approximately 4 to 6 months for delivery of the strategic plan, with the plan due before June 30, 2027. There will then be 2 implementation meetings with the board through 2027, with the exact timing to be discussed with the consultant. 


We anticipate a budget of $20,000 to $40,000 for this process, with a limit of $40,000.


Submission guidelines

Proposals should be submitted to strategy@hunterspointparks.org by 5pm on November 18, 2026. 


Proposals must include:

  • Firm profile overview, including name, website, address, and contact information.

  • Team resumes with clear information about their role and the resources the consultant is bringing into the planning process.

  • Methodology and approach for strategic planning.

  • An overview of the initial proposed process, with the understanding that some of it will be developed based on our particular needs.

  • Experience working with similar nonprofits. 

  • References from 3 relevant strategic planning clients.

  • A list of anticipated deliverables. 

  • A complete fee proposal.


Questions should be submitted to jessica@hunterspointparks.org. 


Finalists will be subject to a conflict of interest check.