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 of, friends, national and/or zoo:
“God’s benison go with you, and with those
That would make good of bad, and friends of foes!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Friendship demands a religious treatment. We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected. Reverence is a great part of it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The cultivation of one set of faculties tends to the disuse of others. The loss of one faculty sharpens others; the blind are sensitive in touch. Has not the extreme cultivation of the commercial faculty permitted others as essential to national life, to be blighted by disease?”
—J. Ellen Foster (1840–1910)
“The zoo cannot but disappoint. The public purpose of zoos is to offer visitors the opportunity of looking at animals. Yet nowhere in a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal’s gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)