A Deloitte staff member assisting with gardens work outside the Visitor Center

Fifty years ago, a group of ambitious volunteers decided that historic Oakland Cemetery deserved a dedicated team to restore its landscape and share its stories.

That passionate group formed what would eventually become Historic Oakland Foundation, the nonprofit organization that partners with the City of Atlanta to preserve Oakland’s beauty and connect the community with its rich history. While Historic Oakland Foundation is now supported by more than twenty full-time staff members, volunteer work remains at the heart of everything we accomplish.

To celebrate these incredible volunteers and honor the contributions they made and continue to make, we hosted an action-packed Week of Service from June 1–6.

On Monday, volunteers shared their stories and the unique reasons they chose to get involved with Oakland. You can hear their experiences and meet a few of our volunteers on our social media channels.

Next, it was time to dig in and get our hands dirty!

Historic Oakland Foundation staff cleaning headstones

On Tuesday, our gardens team welcomed first-time volunteers to join our weekly garden crew to help with special projects and garden maintenance throughout the Cemetery and Visitor Center Courtyard.

Don’t be too intimidated by the idea of volunteering in preservation.

While some projects require technical skills and specialized knowledge, simpler tasks like cleaning headstones are perfect for beginners. On Wednesday morning, new volunteers joined Oakland’s preservation team and long-time volunteers for a crash course in cleaning techniques before helping beautify headstones in the Original Six Acres.

Historic Oakland Foundation staff couldn’t let volunteers have all the fun.

On Thursday morning, they joined the preservation crew and Roots Academy students to clean headstones and monuments at picturesque Bell Tower Ridge.

A Deloitte staff member assisting with gardens work

The final work day brought our largest volunteer group of the week.

Friday morning, we welcomed more than 100 Deloitte team members to the Cemetery as part of their Impact Day. With guidance from our gardens team, they trimmed shrubs, pulled weeds, and prepared garden beds for planting.

We capped off the week in the best possible way: a party!

On Saturday, volunteers joined us for a volunteer appreciation brunch, where they enjoyed a buffet and spent time socializing with fellow volunteers and staff on the Gable Foundation Lawn outside the Visitor Center. What a lovely community—united by a shared love of history, horticulture, and a place unlike any other.

Much has changed in the past 50 years.

Acres have been restored, gardens planted, events hosted, and generations of staff and volunteers have come and gone. Still, we like to imagine that those determined volunteers in 1976 would be proud of the community they helped build and the dedication that continues to sustain a place they cared so deeply about.

We are incredibly grateful to our volunteers for keeping that spirit of service alive throughout the past five decades, and we look forward to the next 50 years of sharing Oakland with the public.

The celebration continues…join us for our 50th Golden Jubilee Picnic, a once-in-a-lifetime evening at Oakland! Learn more here.

Or apply to become a volunteer—we are always excited to welcome new faces to our growing community of Oakland enthusiasts!

Historic Oakland Foundation Celebrates 50th Anniversary with Week of Service