Friends of the National Zoo (FONZ), the Zoo's membership program, is the partner of the National Zoological Park that has been providing support to wildlife conservation programs at the Zoo and around the world since 1958. FONZ members receive free parking, discounts at the Zoo's stores and restaurants, and Smithsonian Zoogoer, an informative bimonthly magazine filled with the latest Zoo news, research and photos.
FONZ's 40,000 members include about 20,000 families, largely in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, and volunteers number more than 1,000 individuals. FONZ provides guest services, development support, education and outreach programs, concessions management, and financial support for research and conservation.
Read more about this topic: National Zoological Park (United States)
Famous quotes containing the words friends, national and/or zoo:
“We follow where the Swamp Fox guides,
His friends and merry men are we;
And when the troop of Tarleton rides,
We burrow in the cypress tree.
The turfy hammock is our bed,
Our home is in the red deer’s den,
Our roof, the tree-top overhead,
For we are wild and hunted men.”
—William Gilmore Simms (1806–1872)
“The return of the asymmetrical Saturday was one of those small events that were interior, local, almost civic and which, in tranquil lives and closed societies, create a sort of national bond and become the favorite theme of conversation, of jokes and of stories exaggerated with pleasure: it would have been a ready- made seed for a legendary cycle, had any of us leanings toward the epic.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“...there was the annual Fourth of July picketing at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. ...I thought it was ridiculous to have to go there in a skirt. But I did it anyway because it was something that might possibly have an effect. I remember walking around in my little white blouse and skirt and tourists standing there eating their ice cream cones and watching us like the zoo had opened.”
—Martha Shelley, U.S. author and social activist. As quoted in Making History, part 3, by Eric Marcus (1992)