Donate
All donations will be collected on behalf of McCarren Tennis by the Open Space Alliance for North Brooklyn, a not-for-profit that has already has had great success in restoring McCarren and other parks. Any donations made to the courts will be sequestered from general donations. As we are all volunteers, there is no "overhead" except for the ten percent we are required to pay to the NYC Parks Department - so 90% of your donations will go directly to the courts themselves. All donations are 100% tax deductible. To make a donation, please click on the button below:
If you'd prefer to send a check, you can do that too:
Payee: Open Space Alliance for North Brooklyn
Memo line: McCarren Tennis Courts
Send checks to:
McCarren Tennis Association
c/o Velour
26 Dobbin St., 3rd Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11222
June 4th, 2011 - 12:14
Can someone please explain to me how Parks and Rec has the nerve to hike the individual price for a tennis pass by 100% from last year (now $200 from last year’s $100), then take away an entire weekend for people who bought the pass to play at the McCarren courts, then announce that the proceeds from this “benefit” tournament will go to the upkeep and improvement of the McCarren courts? Why are we paying $100 more than last year? I doubt the Parks and Rec workers got a substantial raise this year. I’ll be damned if I will “donate” any money to maintain those courts after forking over $200 bucks to play for a season, then having a whole weekend (the only time most of us can play) taken away for a “benefit”. Thanks a lot. Next time, why don’t you give us hard-working New Yorkers some explanation of both the fee hike and why you think it’s okay to steal a beautiful weekend from us.
June 4th, 2011 - 15:50
Aaron, I am assuming you are new to the neighborhood. Welcome. Last year, and for 25 years before that, we had courts that were wrecked to the point of unplayability. The Parks department hadn’t resurfaced them in over 25 years. For that reason, a group of local volunteers banded together and started raising money to repair our local courts. After 5 tournaments, hand resurfacing one court ourselves, and doing our best to raise awareness in the media, we were able to secure a $60k grant to fully restore the courts last fall. But because the Parks department still does not spend one dollar of permit fees to maintain our courts, we still hold 2 fundraisers per year. 100% of the proceeds go the the repair and maintenance of the courts.
In case it’s not clear to you from the following, we are not the Parks department. In fact, we fought a long fight against the fee increases and continue to lobby Parks to end its discrimination against tennis players and roll back its unsustainable fee increases. In short, we are not the enemy — we’re the good guys who you can thank for bringing beautiful courts back to Williamsburg. I apologize for the loss of one and a half weekend days, but I’m pretty sure the community is better off because of our fundraising. I hope you will play next year….
Please read our website for more info. And perhaps you want to get involved in the fight. Let us know.
November 11th, 2011 - 22:06
In light of the above, is there a way then to donate to Mccarren Tennis Courts without any of it (10%, it says above) going to the NYC Parks Dept? I was equally appalled by the 100% fee hike from last year. Equally as bad is the fact that you have to go to Manhattan or Downtown Bklyn to enroll. Since none of the yearly fee will help maintain the beautiful new courts, how can we make a donation directly to MT?