When Greg Moore took the helm of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy in 1985, the nonprofit had three employees and no clear purpose beyond helping raise money for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

In May, he stepped down as CEO of an organization with a $56 million budget and a staff of 425. It operates seven gift shops and six native plant nurseries, and oversees nearly 25,000 volunteers. It’s helping coordinate the creation of a 14-acre park to the Presidio and restoration efforts at Mount Tamalpais.

The one thing that hasn’t changed, perhaps, is Moore’s genial deflection of credit for the enormity of what the nonprofit does.

“This park was created by Bay Area activism,” Moore said, referring to the national recreation area that now encompasses 80,000 acres in three counties and was established by Congress in 1972 after years of community pressure. “We always believed we were inheriting that legacy.”

Moore’s partial departure — his new title is special adviser — comes amid a larger effort to find new ways of connecting the parks to the Bay Area’s 7 million-plus residents. This includes individuals and families who might not even realize that many of the varied spaces exist.

“This isn’t about starting from the beginning, but building on what we’ve done,” said Christine Lehnertz, the conservancy’s new chief executive. “That’s central to our vision going forward — convey the value of this national park to a more diverse audience.”

In selecting Lehnertz — a National Park Service veteran who spent 2015 and 2016 as superintendent of the GGNRA — the conservancy’s 27-member Board of Trustees chose someone who knows from experience how the conservancy, a private group, intersects with the National Park Service and the autonomous Presidio Trust.

Lehnertz appreciated that symbiosis during her time as GGNRA superintendent, and was receptive when the board approached her after Moore made it clear he wanted to step back from day-to-day responsibilities.

“A park superintendent spends a lot of time worrying about operations, budgets, politics. Only around the edges is there room for the aspirational aspects of the job,” she said. “For me, to feed both sides of my heart, I couldn’t resist.”

The conservancy has a myriad of operational details as well, to be sure. But everything it does in some sense is conceived as an enhancement to the parks, rather than basic nuts and bolts. The extent of the nonprofit’s impact in turn is tied to how much money it can raise from donors.

What Moore has handed to Lenhertz includes a quantifiable measure of the conservancy’s stature: a remarkably broad and deep base of support.

In the most recent annual report, the list of individuals and organizations that contributed more than $1,000 during 2018 fills six pages of the tabloid-size document, four columns of names per page. The list includes 55 donors who gave $100,000 or more.

That’s a far cry from the $9,000 raised in 1982, the year after the conservancy was conceived by a handful of park advocates including Moore, then a GGNRA employee. Or even in 2001, when the conservancy completed its work with the Park Service to transform Crissy Field from a nondescript storage area into a 100-acre bayside park with an 18-acre marsh. That effort was aided not only by the 3,000 volunteers who helped with initial plantings, but a $13.5 million gift from the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund.

At the time, the size of the donation was unprecedented for a public park. Now, the conservancy and the Presidio Trust have raised several gifts of this scale as part of the $100 million push for what is called Tunnel Tops Park, the 14-acre landscape to be unfurled across the Presidio Parkway that will connect Crissy Field to the historic Main Post above.

The cynic would say that such financial gifts are easy pickings, given the wealth of many people in San Francisco and the Bay Area. Fundraising veterans disagree.

“The Presidio has a lot of rich neighbors — but people are shrewd about how they invest,” said Mark Buell, the former conservancy chairman and current president of San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Commission. “They have to believe you can deliver the goods.”

Moore earned that credibility on a number of fronts, such as working with the Park Service to bring Fort Baker back to life in the early 2000s and establishing a shuttle program that takes San Franciscans from branch libraries in underserved neighborhoods to such destinations as Muir Woods. Accessible trails now lace Lands End, north of Golden Gate Park and above the Pacific Ocean, as well as a visitor center that opened in 2012.

“Behind the mild demeanor is a guy who has been absolutely focused on the mission,” Buell said of Moore. “He’s always monitored everything, and there is so much attention to details.”

That’s also the perception of Jennifer Devlin at EHDD, the architecture firm that designed Lands End’s visitor center and now is involved in projects that include a more visitor-friendly complex on the Embarcadero for Alcatraz ferries.

“He really took on making the GGNRA an inviting place to all,” said Devlin, a principal at EHDD. “He’s friendly but dogged, and such a ferocious advocate for the park.”

The advantage that Lehnertz has coming in is an understanding of the complexity of the GGNRA map, which includes fairly remote outposts in Marin and San Mateo counties. Beyond that, her approach to the superintendent job in 2015 and 2016 left a mark with insiders.

“You could tell that she had a grand vision, thinking 10 steps ahead in terms of where we needed to be,” recalled Staci Slaughter, vice chair of the conservancy board.

Now, instead of looking to the conservancy for assistance, Lehnertz will focus on how to make it even more effective. When to take the lead, and when to offer quiet assistance.

“The whole thing about the conservancy, we’re the glue that brings the different partners together,” Slaughter said. “Those projects don’t happen by themselves.”

John King is The San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic. Email: jking@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @johnkingsfchron