<VV> CPF Museum

[Kent Sullivan]

Keeping the lights and the heat on will FAR outstrip the cost of building
our own place, over time. So, really, that's the bigger problem long-term.
It is much more likely that we could have a successful capital campaign to
raise money to build or buy/remodel a building, because it's tangible,
fun/exciting, and has a definite end/amount of money.

Raising money over a bazillion years to keep the doors open: very difficult
to do. There's no definite end (although one would probably do wave after
wave of campaigns, so technically each campaign would have an end, but
members would become fatigued quickly), it's not a fun thing to give money
to ("Honey, we're keeping that light bulb burning for three months!"), and
it's not very tangible. I also should mention that donors outside the CORSA
membership are much more likely to donate to a building rather than a
keep-the-doors-open fund.

Any museum we would have is not going to make much in admission fees. It's
just a fact. We are a specialty car club and have a limited appeal. Sure, we
will have some non-Corvair people visit, but not a significant number.

The Endowment Fund is indeed a good way to help keep the lights on and the
doors open. But it's not the best way to raise money to build the building.

At the time that I was CPF President, I did a bunch of research about other
car museums. Some pertinent information:

1) The Corvette Museum got itself in deep financial trouble. I won't go into
details here, but the lesson is that even a club like this, with really
deep-pocketed members and a reasonable "fan base" of visitors, can have
serious trouble with money for day-to-day operations.

2) All of the successful museums I talked to had separate BoDs from the car
club. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is it makes it
possible to introduce people from outside the family to the BoD, which pays
big dividends over the years--not just in outside perspective but
connections to other people and potential donors. 

3) The state of Michigan had, at least when I did this research, a program
where they would take over operation (including funding) of car museums. I
did not investigate this closely but it's worth looking into if and when we
get serious about a building.

--Kent
-----Original Message-----
From: virtualvairs-bounces at corvair.org
[mailto:virtualvairs-bounces at corvair.org] On Behalf Of Mark Corbin
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 9:19 PM
To: Clark Hartzel; Virtual Vairs
Subject: Re: <VV> CPF Museum

The key word here is ENDOWMENT. Without large endowment funds, no museum
could survive. What we need is an endowment fund large enough to pay for
ALL overhead, over and above that which has to purchase the facilities that
we would have for the collection. Once the Endowment Fund can cover all the
overhead, THEN we can truly have a self-sufficient museum. We would also be
one of the privileged few.

-Mark


> [Original Message]
> Subject: <VV> CPF Museum
>
> As CPF Curator, I should be more positive but, I can't ever see us
> having our own museum.  Even if someone "gave" us a building, it costs
> lots of money to maintain a museum.  Jack Miller at our Ypsi museum says
> visitor admission fees don't even cover the electric bill let alone
> insurance, heat, water bill, wages,etc.  He recently spent $50,000
> installing a sprinkler system to meet city code.  Who would we get to
> stay at the museum 7 days a week to run it?  I'm curator for CPF and I
> only get to the museum a couple of times a year.  Jack is paid a salary
> to sit there waiting for the dozen or so people who may wander in on a
> given day.  To fund a museum you need endowments from rich people or the
> government.  Let's face it, Corvair people are at the bottom of the
> barrel wealth wise.  If we had any money we wouldn't be playing with
> rusty Corvairs!
> Clark Hartzel
>

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