Episode 39: Friends of the Urban Forest

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A transcript, lightly edited for clarity and length, follows.

Show Guest: Dan Flanagan, Executive Director, Friends of the Urban Forest

Voices of the Community Introduction: Welcome to voices of the community which explores critical issues facing Northern California communities. We introduce you to the voices of community thought leaders and change makers who are working on solutions that face our fellow individual community members neighborhoods cities and our region. This is George Koster your host. 

Series Introduction: This episode is part of our series exploring COVID-19’s impact on nonprofits and small businesses in San Francisco. Back in April 2020 when we decided to create this ongoing series on Covid-19’s impact first on nonprofits and then on small businesses in the San Francisco Bay. We like you had no idea how long the pandemic would go on and what the health and economic impact would be on our community. Going into 2021 the pandemic is now killing more people, shutting down more nonprofits and small businesses, along with wiping out the lively hoods of families, neighborhoods and communities.

We will continue to shine a spotlight on the nonprofits, and small businesses that make up the fabric of our community along with the founders and staff who are struggling to deal with the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic on their operations, services and sustainability until we can all get to the other side of the pandemic. Along the way, we will also share with you all the amazing solutions that our nonprofits, small businesses, foundations, and government leaders are working on to help us all get to the other side of the pandemic and come together to rebuild our communities with more economic, social and environmental equality.

Show Guest Dan: I think in terms of climate change, we really are on the forefront and we are the ones that have been pushing the planting of trees since 1981. And we all should be reminded is that one of the issues of, climate changes is the heat Island effect and when you're in the built environment and we will be experiencing more and more of that. And there are parts of this city where it's really, a social justice issue is that we have treed neighborhoods that are wealthy, and we have less wealthy neighborhoods that have very low canopy 

Episode Intro - Show Host George: This is long time Executive Director of Friends of the Urban Forest Dan Flanagan. This past summer and fall we experienced the triple threat of a global pandemic, economic meltdown, and catastrophic wildfires that blanketed the San Francisco Bay Area in deadly smoke and toxic air. Our urban forests are one of the most important green infrastructures we can have to help us deal with climate change and the hottest years on record. Trees in our city help us address the social and environmental justice issues facing our fellow community members in low-income neighborhoods.

The city trees help filter the air pollution, retain rainwater, provide shade and their very presence helps reduce our stress levels, blood pressure and increases our mental engagement and happiness. And trees may help lower property and violent crime. In a 2010 USDA Forest Service Study research forester Geoffrey Donovan found that "large street trees can reduce crime by signaling to a potential criminal that a neighborhood is better cared for and therefore, a criminal is more likely to be caught"

Show Host George: I'm joined remotely via zoom by Dan Flanagan, the Executive Director of Friends of the Urban Forest. So, Dan, thanks for being here today.

Show Guest Dan: Hi, thank you very much. Glad to be here.

Show Host George: I think it would be really helpful if people are listening or watching the show could understand who is the Friends of the Urban Forest? And then how do you fit into the proverbial ecosystem of San Francisco's idea of greening, community engagement, education, your advocacy piece. So, tell us more about Friends of the Urban Forest.

Show Guest Dan: Great. Well, actually in two weeks, we'll start, I think celebrating our 40th year. So, we've been around for a while. We are essentially a community-based organization.  Now, historically, during non COVID times, we have two plantings every week that are community-based all throughout the city. And we bring neighbors and volunteers together to transform neighborhoods

 In the last couple of years, we've been planning anywhere from 40 and in some cases, a hundred trees, 105 trees every two weeks. So that's how we started and then about 10 or 15 years later, they decided great job planting trees, lovely. We should actually take care of those trees after we plant them. So, the organization started a tree care program where we would plant the tree, and then take care of the trees for three years. And then about 10 years ago, we decided, oh gosh, you know, there's way too much impermeable surface in the city.

And trees really benefit from more nonpermeable spaces. So we started something called sidewalk landscaping, and I think we planted our hundredth sidewalk landscape just about a year ago. And so, we now open up as much sidewalks as possible, and the ideal thing would be to link to tree basins.

And we put in native South San Francisco plants. And we've really been increasing that over the past couple of years. It's a wonderful program. So, we kind of grown over the 40 years and about 15, 20 years ago, we decided that we should start giving back to the city.

Not only by planting trees, working with communities and developing a green infrastructure to the city, but we should also use the opportunity to educate. So about 20 years ago, we started something called Green Teams and it was Youth Tree Care program in the beginning. And we've been doing that ever since.

I think it's like 19 years now and we have groups of 12 kids, usually 14 to 18 years old, normally from the Southeast under-served populations. And they work with us for about eight weeks, sometimes more. And we do four cohorts during the year. And the great thing is it’s a job preparedness program.

They're paid. We train them in various aspects of urban forestry, but with a real emphasis on tree care. And actually, those kids take care about 800 to a thousand trees every year of the 3,500 trees that we have to take care of. And on top of that, we decided about, five years ago, six years ago to start moving into the 18- to 24-year-old group.

And we wanted to do not a workforce development program, but a workforce kind of development program where we would be taking some of these young adults, 18 to 24, who are under-served, and we would pay them. And we would try to train them in arboriculture and to the point where we start off with two or three kids, initially, we were working with a wonderful program called wraparound program out of San Francisco general hospital.

And we were the last component of that program and they were taking folks that would have been stabbed and shot from gang violence in San Francisco and thought, "hey, this is a teachable moment" perhaps we can change their lives. And so, we would be the last piece of that program, where they would actually work for us 30 hours a week for about six months.

Then we decided, you know, maybe you don't have to be shot or stab to have this opportunity. So, we expanded it out. So now we have up to five folks in, our Green Crew, and serendipitously it's been incredibly lucky that we have those folks now with COVID.

So that's a big part of our program now. We also moved into watering trees now for the first time, every tree that we plant, we're trying to water a good percentage of those. And lastly, the thing that we are really quite proud of is our advocacy. And I've always considered ourselves as the Lorax of San Francisco we're the only entity that actually speaks primarily about the trees. And we've always focused on street trees, but we're trying to talk about all the trees now, we really care about the whole urban forest. And one of the things we're most proud about is running the campaign in 2016. And for many of us, the only nice thing that happened in 2016 was the fact that Prop E basically was passed.

And that took back all the street trees from homeowners and made it the responsibility of the City to take care of. They now own all the street trees because we had the most crazy regulations around street trees before 2016. Now we are one of the leaders in the United States where we have set up a dedicated funding source in the City.

Now it started off at $19 million it's up to $20 million for the care of every single street tree in perpetuity. And that money should grow over time. So, from a little nonprofit started in 1981 by a bunch of really dedicated folks who realized that you drive around the city. There weren't a lot of trees in those days. And from that point in time, you know, we have planted almost half the street trees you see in the streets of San Francisco.  

George: Thank you. That was great. So much of what you guys do is also in person. I E you have volunteers helping you plant the, 60 to 100 plus trees every two weeks. How has COVID-19 impacted the operations of Friends of the Urban Forest and what have you guys done, to deal with that?

Dan Flanagan: Well, I'll tell a little story. I was having dinner with my husband on March 6th and we were in a really lovely restaurant, you know, a little Chapeau and I got a call, and we were doing a planting the next day March 7th, we had 60 trees being planted in the Richmond.

And we've heard rumbles during the day that, gosh, they're going to start closing down large gatherings, but we heard at actually four o'clock that afternoon that we were fine.  Go ahead and do it. And so, I'm sitting in a restaurant with probably 60 people there and I got a call at seven, o'clock saying.

We really should cancel. Well, we had the choice to cancel or not. I decided to cancel because when people say you have a choice to do something, I thought, probably should take, the safest route, but I'm sitting in a restaurant with 60 people and we have to kind of re-engineer this whole planting.

We have all the trees out there. All the volunteers have been invited.  I wasn't a happy camper that day. So, we went out in the rain next morning. Got all the trees brought them back and literally we know that we're moving into a different world. Now, one of the real lucky things we have is that we have a great person who does, all of our HR and billing, and  just so happens to live in Hong Kong.

And on Monday afternoon, we got on the phone with her and she said, prepare to shelter in place. Your office will be closed, and this is going to go on for months. And because you are two weeks behind where we are in Hong Kong. So, at that point, we decided we better pay attention to this.

So, we completely, re-engineered our business. We really totally depended on volunteers. They help do tree care. They actually did all the planting with us. We facilitated the planting of homeowners and volunteers, and so we've flipped it all around. And luckily, we could use our internal staff. We could use the Green Crew; use the Green Teens and we try to do everything with our staff. And we actually closed down the office by that Friday, everyone took their chairs home and their computers home, and we were ready to work remotely and literally the next Monday bingo. I'm very proud of the city. We moved quickly. I think that's what really helped us for the last couple of months.

 So, it had a huge impact on us. And now to continue that conversation is that we literally couldn't do anything, obviously when we were all sheltered in place, no tree planting, nothing. And, you know, we only get paid when we actually plant trees. So that was not pretty.

And we were very lucky to get a PPP loan and that kind of tied us over until June. The end of June we were able to start planting again and we've been planting ever since. And caring for trees and doing everything else.

George: Dan over the years that you've been working there and obviously the decades that Friends of the Urban Forest has been around, what do you feel has been the biggest impact obviously on our environment, but also the social justice component of greening neighborhoods along with the training of youth and their impact on their families and the community at large?

Dan Flanagan: Well, I often think that we are so well-placed today with what's going on. And I always felt like a trifecta. First of all, I think in terms of climate change, we really are on the forefront and we are the ones that have been pushing the planting of trees since 1981.

And we all should be reminded is that one of the issues of, climate changes is the heat Island effect and when you're in the built environment and we will be experiencing more and more of that. And there are parts of this city where it's really, a social justice issue is that we have treed neighborhoods that are wealthy, and we have less wealthy neighborhoods that have very low canopy. And the other thing that we did strategically is I mentioned prop E while we took back all the street trees. That gave us the right us, the City, and partnered with us to determine where we want to put our assets in terms of putting trees in the ground.

Because in the past, we had to depend upon homeowners to put a tree in front of the house. And that was asking them, put a liability in front of their house, which was a hard sell. Thank God we were able to plant almost 50,000 trees. So, since 2017, actually when it started, we now could focus and bring social justice issues and environmental justice to the forefront and the City and I have to give Public Works and the Bureau of Urban Forestry, a huge kudo here is that they decided, you know, we need to now work as hard as we can to equalize a canopy. So, we've been focused on the Southeast of the City and the Western part of the City, literally since 2017.

And now going forward, you know, we have lost 70% of our funding from the City for planting trees because of COVID which is completely understandable. Not my first choice, but it's happened. And I think, you know, hopefully it will feel ameliorate going forward. We have state funding, and we are literally now almost exclusively planting in those underserved areas.

So, in terms of social justice, environmental justice, I think we're doing the right thing. And on top of that, serendipitously, we've moved into workforce development and educating, you know, young 14- to 18-year-olds. And now I actually, for the 18-to-24-year old’s we are creating a ladder opportunity for jobs because our goal is to hire these four to five green crews, for six months, hopefully a year, maybe two years and prepare them to work for the city or work for the park and rec or, somewhere else. Because with prop E there is a really great need on the city's part to have. Qualified arborist, working on our tree canopy before we didn't have the city, didn't have the money.

Now we have $20 million to do that. So, we're trying to focus our folks that we're working with and have that be going into various departments. So, in many ways, we've been doing it because this is what we believe in.

George: Thank you, Dan. How can people help? Obviously, you just lost 70% of your income, so donations are always helpful.  So how can folks who are watching or listening this support friends of the Urban Forest?

Dan Flanagan: Well, you know, it's funny, one of the things did when I came to a Friends Urban Forest, I have a crazy background. I was on wall street and actually worked in environmental education after wall street. And I really love getting into the guts of an organization. And I realized, we plant every two weeks I'm going to go to all the plantings. And I also discovered that I'm really way too short and I'm trying to talk to 80 people, and no one could see me. So that I learned to stand on a ladder and give a little bit of a schpeel.

And so, I did that.  If I'm in the city, either sidewalk garden program or planting program I talk. And towards the end, When I was getting really desperate for money, I started talking about, if anyone knows a billionaire, please make the introduction. And I'm working on some billionaires right now, my fingers are crossed, but that is once in a lifetime thing. But we have grown our support over the past year, tremendously, and we need to continue that because we were started when the city wasn't putting any money towards street trees. And homeowners and volunteers and donors came together to bring the money and make it happen.

Well, we're back exactly where that is now. City's not putting much money at all. I'm going to try to change that I'm going to be advocating for the next two or three months in the budget process to give more money towards the street trees.

We've beefed up our development department and we would always send out letters and do the normal development stuff. But now, since everything's moved to digital, we are really working very hard in the digital arena. And last year on giving Tuesday, we only raised $6,000 this year with more outreach and digital, we raised $25,000.

So, we desperately, desperately need donors, you know, $50.00 $100.00 $250.00 that’s our sweet spot, those are wonderful. And then if you do know a billionaire, have him give me a call.

George: I like that one. So, Dan out of the pandemic, obviously you guys have lost, income and the ability for people to come out and help plant trees. What do you feel are some of the positive things that could come out of the pandemic to support our environment and dealing with both the social justice and the climate change issues?

Dan Flanagan: That's a hard one for us because it's hard to say, oh, we learned so many great things about changing our business and we're not using volunteers anymore. No, that's horrible. We hate not using volunteers. That's really part of our DNA. We miss it dearly. Our staff loves bringing people together, volunteers and homeowners having coffee and having, you know, bagels on a cold morning or a rainy morning and they still come out and they see what they've done.

We miss that deeply. And so, we want to go back to that as quickly as possible. What it's taught us is that we are really well-placed in this city. Is that we have a diverse portfolio of programs that have grown kind of organically. I like the word organically over the past couple of years, and we're serving exactly what the city needs at this point in time. We need to be hyper aware of climate change and the impact is going to have on this city. We have to be hyper-aware of social justice and environmental justice, and we have to be hyper aware of really being active in a way that impacts our government officials to bring those issues to their forefront.

And have them make decisions that will benefit those issues. So, we’ve learned these things are now becoming even more important.  And we, just desperately want to go back to our old model basically of, you know, working with volunteers.

George: Well, thank you, Dan, for sharing all of your team's work at Friends of the Urban Forest, and we'll make sure that listeners and viewers have your contact information, website social media, so they can follow the Friends of the Urban Forest and get engaged and of course support your mission. Please stay safe on with your crew and as healthy as one can

Dan Flanagan: We will. Thank you very much

Episode Outro - Show Host George: That’s it for this episode of voices of the community. You have been listening to the voice of Dan Flanagan the Executive Director of Friends of the Urban Forest who since conducting this interview has decided to retire in spring of 2021. Friends of the Urban Forest’s talented staff will continue to execute Dan’s work to increase San Francisco’s covered tree canopy from an average of 13.7% to 100 %   

To find out more information about how our Urban Forest helps us mitigate environmental injustice, about Friends of the Urban Forest, along with requesting a free tree to plant near your home or business and to support more trees for our city please go to F U F dot net         

Series Outro: We hope that you enjoy the insights, points of view, and personal stories from the voices of change-makers and their nonprofits and small businesses featured in this series. To find out more and get engaged with the nonprofits, small businesses and staff members, featured in this series please go to my web site george koster dot com and click on Voices of the Community to find links to the extended versions of these interviews and to listen to the entire series. After listening to these stories we hope that you will consider making a donation and volunteering to provide a hand up to your fellow community members.

Series Credits: I want to thank my associate producer Eric Estrada, and Kasey Nance at Citron Studios, along with the wonderful crew at the San Francisco Public Press and KSFP.

Voices of the Community is a member of Intersection for the Arts which allows us to offer you a tax deduction for your contributions. Please go to George Koster dot com and click on the donate link to make a donation to help us provide future shows just like this one. While you are on our web site you can enjoy our archived past shows which feature community voices working on solutions to critical issues facing Northern California communities, and sign up for our newsletter to find out about our future shows as well as shows and events from the organizations that our included in our episodes

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