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Re: Advice needed - soliciting funds from archival donors



Dear Thomas,
    One way to get a corporate donor to "warm" to your views is to stress the
importance of the archive by saying the archive will be used by  "serious
scholars from around America and the world."  Your plans to exhibit the
highlights of the collection,  holding events featuring the collection and
pushing the point of preservation.  Otherwise,  "what is the point of having an
archive in the first place."  there is a certain type of vanity and sense of
immortality associated with archives and stressing that may loosen the wallet.
Using this spin might help or it may not.  But it can't hurt.
-Alex Rankin

"Bunker, Kevin" wrote:

> Howdy, Tom!
>
> Like Dean, I have found myself wondering if soliciting (or suggesting --
> ahem) that a corporate donor might underwrite the cost of processing its
> archival donation. But I maintain that the question might best be answered
> based on the total volume of the donation.
>
> Before Union Pacific Railroad fully decided to pull into itself chunks of
> its acquired Southern Pacific Company records (for inclusion within its own
> corporate archives housed at the Western Heritage Museum in Omaha), I
> suggested to CA State Railroad Museum's curatorial types that they might
> request a "rolling" or staged underwriting for records processing of freshly
> donated records. My proposal was not considered "appropriate," whatever that
> means.
>
> In the UP/SP case, CSRM had just accepted an additional 900 -- 1000 sq ft of
> mixed historic records, technical drawings and the like. These have been
> added to the preexisting 900+ sq ft of unprocessed SP records which CSRM has
> had in storage for roughly a decade. It was (and remains) my belief that UP
> (or perhaps another interested capital donor with an interest in making
> historic materials accessible) might be VERY helpful in getting a major
> collection processed, conserved or copied (in the case of, say, glass plate
> negatives).
>
> By the dearth of replies on the list to your query, I'd guess that this
> concept is not popular at all.
>
> [And just to make you feel bad (?) it's only 45 degrees and pea-soup foggy
> here in your old home town of Sackatomatoes. Must be pretty frigid in
> mid-Ohio, yes?]
>
> Kevin V. Bunker
> Student Assistant
> CA State Archives
>
> > ----------
> > From:         Thomas Berry[SMTP:tberry@WCNET.ORG]
> > Reply To:     Archives & Archivists
> > Sent:         Friday, December 01, 2000 2:07 PM
> > To:   ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
> > Subject:      Advice needed - soliciting funds from archival donors
> >
> > Greetings!
> >
> > One of our Board members has suggested that we ask potential donors of
> > major
> > collections to help underwrite the costs of processing and storing those
> > collections. Does anyone have any advice or experience with this that can
> > be
> > passed on to our Board?
> >
> > Best wishes for the weekend,
> >
> >
> > Thomas Berry, Archivist
> > Historical Construction Equipment Association
> > 16623 Liberty Hi Road
> > Bowling Green, Ohio 43402
> > Phone 419-352-5616
> > Fax 419-352-6086
> > tberry@wcnet.org
> > http://www.hcea.net
> >
> > A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List!
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> > Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>
> >
>
> A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List!
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to listserv@listserv.muohio.edu
>       In body of message:  SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname
>                     *or*:  UNSUB ARCHIVES
> To post a message, send e-mail to archives@listserv.muohio.edu
>
> Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at
>      http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html
>
> Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>

A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List!

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Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at
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Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>