Mission Accomplished ... For Now

Most nonprofit organizations would love to put themselves out of business. That would mean the diseases they fought had been eradicated; that all creatures great and small were safe from harm and free from suffering; that arts were well-funded and easily accessible; that governments and justice systems were fair and free of corruption; and that everyone in the world had access to clean water, nutritious food, quality education and decent housing.

Unfortunately, very few of them get to shutter their windows and declare their missions accomplished.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund was one of the lucky ones. Incorporated in 1979, VVMF was founded specifically to build a memorial to the more than 58,000 American servicemen and women who died in the Vietnam War. The Wall was completed in 1982, and the folks at the organization behind it figured there was nothing left to do but close up shop — save for a small staff that was on hand to ensure that the monument was properly maintained.

"By February of 1985, the Memorial Fund had essentially shut down, although a core group of supporters and the National Park Service organized large ceremonial events at The Wall each Memorial Day and Veterans Day," VVMF founder and President Jan Scruggs says. "As the 10th anniversary of The Wall approached, we saw the need to re-establish the Memorial Fund for the commemorations and renovations that would be taking place in the coming year.

"The plan was to dismantle the staff after the 10th anniversary, but instead of shutting down, the Memorial Fund remained opened to fulfill the needs of the public, for education and continued healing about the Vietnam War."

A pretty amazing thing happened when the VVMF regrouped and re-energized its efforts: People remembered. Even after a decade of relative inactivity, the organization's original donors and even their children were ready to help it fund this new mission.

Key to that, it seems, is the way VVMF historically has communicated with its donors, which is straightforward and transparent.

"We have gone back and traced people who have been giving since 1980," says Adam Arbogast, director of program marketing at VVMF. "Even after 10 years or more of not giving, when they found out that we were actively soliciting and not just administering funds (for maintenance on the memorial), they immediately came back. It's just that important to them that we continue this mission, to not let this just turn into just some memorial.

"Every time we see a need, we take it straight to our donors and gauge their opinion about whether it fits, if it's something worthwhile for us to do. That's been the driving force all along," he says.

Arbogast calls VVMF's core donors its "entrée into the public."

"They know us very well and what we're doing," he says. "They'll be the first ones to tell us, 'Don't do that.' We haven't really had that happen. They've always been very supportive. But they are the test ground."

That kind of engagement is what allowed VVMF to pick right up where it left off when it came to fundraising for new initiatives like the Education Center at The Wall that is in the works right now.

"It's kind of unique to our 
organization," Arbogast says. "Rarely do you find a nonprofit that engages in a capital campaign, builds something, goes away, comes back to administer some funds and then launches another capital campaign while still supporting the original cause."

Looking back

But lest you think all that success is the result of some high-powered staff of fundraising pros, take a look back at VVMF's somewhat inauspicious start.

Spurred by the memory of the many friends he watched die in Vietnam, Scruggs returned to the U.S. determined to memorialize the 58,272 American servicepeople who never returned. His first efforts at garnering support for a memorial got a less-than-enthusiastic response from fellow vets who thought it was more important to provide better benefits for those returning from Vietnam than to build a memorial.

According to Arbogast, Scruggs liquidated some land he had received as an inheritance and started VVMF with a whopping $2,800 — enough to hire a lawyer to incorporate the organization and hold a press conference, which took place on Memorial Day, 1979, to announce plans to raise $1 million to build a memorial.

Scruggs' initiative didn't prompt much media attention, but a few small donations began to trickle in. By July, the Memorial Fund had collected only $144.50, a fact that was reported on the "CBS Evening News" and even lampooned on late-night television.

Not exactly a high point, one would think, but that television exposure caught the eye of John Wheeler, a graduate of West Point, Yale Law School and Harvard Business School, who also served in Vietnam and spearheaded the effort to build a Southeast Asia Memorial at West Point.

Wheeler helped Scruggs recruit support from Vietnam-era veterans who had deep ties in the professional community. From there, word began to spread. According to Arbogast, things really took off when comedian Bob Hope was recruited as the face of a formal direct-mail campaign.

"Word started to spread, and money started coming in," he says. "Maybe you would get 50 cents in an envelope or $1.50, $2, $5. It picked up steam, and more and more people were interested in getting involved.

"The American Legion pledged a million dollars, and there were corporate contributions that came close to equaling that amount," he adds, "but the money that built The Wall was in large part from $5 and $10 check writers, guys who passed the hat at the bar and sent that money in."

When controversy helps

VVMF had quite an aggressive time frame for building the memorial — it hoped to break ground on Veterans Day, 1982, just 36 months from the time the idea was officially hatched.

As with all things Vietnam-related, controversies around the memorial cropped up all over the place, Arbogast says. At the time, just four years after the official end of the war, there still wasn't overwhelming support for returning vets. Vets themselves wanted the monies raised to go toward services for them and their families rather than to a memorial. Even among those who thought the memorial was a good idea, there was battle after battle over what it should look like, etc.

But the controversy, which received plenty of press, helped fuel fundraising for the memorial. Organizations such as the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Gold Star Mothers threw their support behind the effort. Children in schools took up collections, and individuals across the country continued to give. The VFW began promoting the idea of the memorial and soliciting donations from its local posts through direct mail. At that time, there were between 9,000 to 10,000 local VFW posts, and over the course of the campaign VFW contributed as much as $300,000 through a combination of donations from individual members and the organization itself.

In the end, VVMF raised almost $3 million for the memorial. It was dedicated to the American people and is now overseen by the U.S. Department of Interior's National Park Service. VVMF keeps up the insurance on it and uses its endowment to maintain the site "in perpetuity," taking on repairs and upkeep as needed, as well as adding new names of vets who had been left out of the original Department of Defense database of those killed in action.

10 years later

Once the organization began to look at ideas for a 10-year commemoration, it became clear there was more work to be done.

"People were coming to The Wall but didn't have a clear understanding of the Vietnam War itself," Arbogast says. "Teachers were teaching from books that focused on World War I and World War II, where Vietnam was talked about in a day or less.

"There was a generation gap, as well," he adds. "A lot of the people who were visiting The Wall weren't even alive when it was built. So we launched an education initiative."

That included a mobile museum, or "traveling wall," called The Wall That Heals, which takes the message of the memorial around the country. Later, spurred by visitors leaving everything from letters to dog tags to a bottle of Jack Daniels and even a Harley-Davidson motorcycle at The Wall, the organization launched a virtual memorial that allowed people to post remembrances online.

Finally, just before the 15th anniversary of The Wall, VVMF went before Congress to get permission to build a visitors education center near the memorial, which is second to the Lincoln Memorial as the most visited memorial in Washington, D.C.

That brings us to the here and now, which according to Arbogast looks a lot like it did back in 1979 — at least as far as fundraising is concerned. VVMF is approaching major donors and corporate sponsors — mainly associated with businessmen who are Vietnam vets — to fund the proposed $85 million center, while individual donors are still sending in smaller gifts to support the upkeep of the original memorial.

Once again, Vietnam vets and their families are leading the way, and Vietnam is coming back into the spotlight, with high-profile projects such as big-budget films slated for release.

"We joke about it; we tell Jan we're just like a little time machine and that this is the 'Jan Method of Fundraising,'" Arbogast says. "You spend time gearing up, prepping, watching the pieces fall into place — then it reaches critical mass, that tipping point where it starts to enter mainstream media, and its relevance in the public increases. Then people see it and understand it better and want to know more.

"This is just like [the campaign for the original memorial]: Things lined up and we're off and running."

Fundraising for the education center had been largely quiet until September, Arbogast says, because VVMF never wanted the project to cannibalize contributions for upkeep of The Wall itself and the programs affiliated with it.

The organization just recently started to actively solicit its housefile for donations for the education center. That was determined by a matching-gift challenge from San Antonio Spurs owner Pete Holt, who offered to match any gifts made by Texas residents, up to $1 million.

Other than that, most direct mail to the housefile is still aimed at maintenance and other issues associated with The Wall.

Some new twists

Most of VVMF's donors are Vietnam veterans themselves and their families. Soliciting donations outside of that base is a tough sell, Arbogast says, stressing how important it is then for the organization to engage multiple generations of veterans' families. (While the vets are in their mid-60s, their children are in their 40s, and their grandchildren are coming up on their 30s — a strong source for volunteers.)

To that end, VVMF has a strong presence online, especially on Facebook. As an example of the kind of enthusiasm its Facebook fans have, VVMF recently ran a contest on the social-media site asking fans to submit their own personal photos of the memorial, and it received more than 2,000 entries (and 2,000 more names on its e-mail list).

"It blew us away," Arbogast says.

While he says it's not raising any substantial money online, the constant Facebook interaction with supporters is useful in other ways. It encourages people to share information about the organization and allows them to feel intimately connected.

"The best we can do [as far as fundraising]," he says, "is set up personal fundraising pages for those people who are active on Facebook and obviously good with engaging and connecting."

But perhaps even more importantly, VVMF uses its social-networking contacts as sounding boards for which issues it will highlight in direct-mail campaigns.

"It's an invaluable resource to do message testing with," he says. "It helps keep your content current and fresh. It's not as much of a guessing game anymore. If you post something on Facebook and it gets 150 to 200 'likes,' it's probably a message you want to go out with more traditional direct mail."

VVMF was "late to the game" with Facebook, Arbogast says, but it already has 17,000 followers in the less than a year that it's had a presence there.

The time is now

As Vietnam vets pass away, Arbogast says, planned giving is playing a larger part in the organization's fundraising. That underscores the importance of creating the education center now.

"We don't want to get to the point of there being only one Vietnam vet left," he says, adding that the threat is twofold: The dwindling population of Vietnam vets means that the opportunity to collect firsthand stories and memorabilia from the war for inclusion in the memorial and education center is quickly drying up — along with the organization's prime donor base.

Despite some similarities, fundraising for the education center is different from that of the memorial itself. E-mail, Facebook, etc., weren't part of the original strategy 30 years ago. And this time around, the organization is preparing to be around for the long haul, far beyond construction of any one particular project.

"Two hundred eighty to 300 Vietnam vets die every day," Arbogast says. "The Wall fulfilled a need, but it also created new needs that needed to be met. The Education Center at The Wall completes the mission The Wall started.

"We need to do this now," he adds. "People get that." FS