About the Foundation
We're a small nonprofit built on a simple idea: shared spaces build community. We help create the parks and plazas along DC's riverfront, take care of them and fill them with things to do – and we work to keep them accessible and welcoming to all.
Our story
Founded in 2017, relaunched in 2025
The Capitol Riverfront Parks Foundation was founded in 2017 to support Yards Park and Canal Park. Until 2023, it stayed quiet. In 2023 and 2024, we established a new board – separate from the Navy Yard BID's board – and the board and staff stepped back and asked what the Foundation should really be for. The answer was community: parks and public spaces are how we build and foster it, but they're not the end in themselves.
In fiscal year 2026 alone, we put $388,300 into public space and the programs that bring people to it, and we now work in eight spaces – from a pickleball center built on an abandoned roadway to a new plaza that opened with a neighborhood planting day.
2017
Founded to support Yards Park and Canal Park.
2023 to 2024
Our board and staff rethink what the Foundation is for, and land on community.
2025
We relaunch with a broader mission. Emblem Plaza opens, and Tingey Plaza hosts its first holiday market.
2026
The Krughoff Pickleball Center opens, neighbors start redesigning Bridge Spot, and an AARP Community Challenge grant launches Seamless at Home.
What we do
Three ways we build community
Programming
Things that give people a reason to come out and meet their neighbors, from the Tingey Plaza Holiday Market to daily open play at the Krughoff courts.
Partnerships
We work alongside the District, the National Park Service, community groups and neighbors – sometimes leading, sometimes backing someone else's good idea.
Investment
We raise money and put it into the spaces themselves: courts, plantings, art and the upkeep that keeps them usable.
How we work
What guides us
Keep what people already love
A lot of our work is place keeping as much as place making. At Bridge Spot, that means designing around the skating, the pickup games and the art wall, not over them.
Everyone's welcome
We work to keep every space accessible and welcoming to all.
Bring people in early
On new projects like Bridge Spot, neighbors help shape the plans through surveys, open houses and workshops.
Back local artists and makers
Murals, markets and the open wall at Bridge Spot give local creatives visibility – and paid work.
Our relationship with the Navy Yard BID
Founded in 2017 by the Navy Yard BID (then the Capitol Riverfront BID), the Foundation is a related but separately governed 501(c)(3) with its own board of directors. We work closely together on our shared mission of making the communities in and around Navy Yard, Buzzard Point, and Maritime Plaza are thriving and welcoming places to live, work, and visit.
Team
Staff
Board
Board of directors
Emeka Moneme
Navy Yard BID
Michael Dreben
Wealth management advisor
Nicole Duritz
AARP
Ashley Forrester
Samsung
Jessica Smith Lennan
Building Bridges Across the River
Priya Madrecki
Capital One
Partners and funders
The work happens with partners
We work with public agencies, community groups and funders at every space.
Partners
- National Park Service
- Canal Park Inc.
- Navy Yard BID
- Friends of Virginia Avenue Park
- Washington Spirit
- Building Bridges Across the River
- Anacostia Riverkeeper
Funders
- Pepco
- AARP
- CSX
- CVS Health
- Capitol Hill Community Foundation
- ANC 8F
Reports and financials
We're a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and we want it to be easy to see how we work and where the money goes.
Annual report: Our first annual report is coming in November 2026.
Form 990: Fiscal year 2026 is the first year we'll file a Form 990. We'll post it here once it's filed.
EIN: 82-0777711
Want to talk about a project, a partnership or a gift?
Email us at partners@riverfrontfoundation.org.