The purpose of the heritage partnership program funding is to engage national heritage arearecipients, partners, communities, and or visitors in shared environmental stewardship

On June 6, 2025, the National Park Service (NPS) awarded a $500,000 cooperative agreement to the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation under the Heritage Partnership Program (CFDA 15.939). The award supports the foundation's role as the coordinating management entity for the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields National Heritage Area, funding initiatives to preserve, interpret, and promote Civil War history across the region through the completion date of September 30, 2025.

The cooperative agreement funds a comprehensive range of heritage preservation and education activities, including battlefield landscape restoration, development of interpretive exhibits and educational programming, creation of heritage trails such as the "Long Road to Freedom" initiative to highlight African American Civil War narratives, and community engagement efforts. These products and services advance the Heritage Partnership Program's core mission of promoting public and private participation in preservation, conservation, education, and outdoor recreation while building resource stewardship ethics among participants within the designated National Heritage Area.

This is done bypromoting greater public and private participation in preservation, conservation, education, and outdoorrecreation programs and activities, and building resource stewardship ethics in its participants. Heritage partnership programs promote the conservation of local natural, historic, scenic, and cultural resources through national heritage areas, national heritage corridors, national historic districts, and other designations (nhas). These authorized programs are the management responsibility of federal commissions, nonprofit groups, universities, state agencies or municipal authorities. They are not units of the national park system, and their lands are not federally owned or managed. Beneficiaries include general public, states and ortheir political subdivisions, non-profits, private entities, the heritage area management coordinating entity.