What is the park doing with its money now?
		How much money is needed to meet park operations needs in toto?
		What is the financial "gap" between current funding and documented park needs?
		What strategies might be used to close that gap?

• When complete, this business plan approach should encourage members of congress to understand and accept the legitimacy of NPS's ongoing budget needs and the reality of individual parks' declining financial resources in real dollar terms.

• Eight parks are currently participating in this exercise: Cape Cod, Canyonlands, Denali, Great Smoky Mountains, Mt. Rainier, Point Reyes, Shenandoah, and Yellowstone; chosen in part because of their ongoing efforts in developing this concept.

• The baseline analysis is being facilitated through a partnership with the National Parks and Conservation Association and a consortium of philanthropic foundations, led by the Henry P. Kendall Foundation. The analysis will be accomplished during the summer of 1998, using talented financial and resource policy analysts recruited from the nation's top business and policy schools, including Yale, Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, the University of Michigan and the University of California at Berkeley.

• This project will link the GPRA strategic planning process to budget formulation, priority setting, and the identification of unfunded needs.

• The result of the process will be eight refreshed budget documents utilizing a common "business plan" approach that work to compliment already implemented GPRA strategic planning, that are both comprehensive and comprehensible to constituencies outside NPS, and that serve as a clear basis for educating various constituencies about the true cost of operating national parks.

• When successfully concluded, all parks will benefit from the resulting transparent, comprehensive, and comprehensible budget documents.