With little to show but enthusiasm, the development staff at the National Constitution Center managed to fund a dream.

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

MINING FOR GOLD

Here, in no specific order, are some recommendations from Sue Seiter, vice president of development, National Constitution Center, and Joan Specter, former NCC campaign manager and current development staff member.

1. “Direct mail can be counter-intuitive. You can think all you want about how you would respond, but if you’re not the classic direct mail customer, it doesn’t matter what you think. You might think, ‘I wouldn’t sign that,’but who cares?” — SS

2. Choose your battles. “We had to look hard at what message we wanted to send to people who are far away, what we could offer someone who might never visit here.” As a result of that rethinking, the NCC scaled back its acquisitions campaigns and focused instead on wooing local donors. — SS

3. If you manage to get a larger gift from a donor through a special appeal, start treating that donor as a higher-level donor. Six months before it opened, the NCC offered new members the opportunity to make a $250 donation and have a name engraved on its We the People Legacy Members Wall. “We had $25 donors who did that; now we call them Legacy members and can try to renew them at the $250 level. We treat them as $250 donors.” — SS

4. Be persistent. “Fundraising isn’t easy. Large gifts … take a long time to get people or companies to come around. Stick with it. Never write anyone off. Think of new things to say to people, nicely, and keep after them.” — JS

After years of selling a dream — raising funds for something that didn’t even exist yet — the folks at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia weren’t about to be stymied by a couple dozen dead Presbyterians.

The former Philadelphians surfaced, so to speak, in 2001, on the first day of construction on the museum and education center dedicated to enlightening the public about the Constitution of the United States of America. It seems that part of the center’s parking garage was being built on an 18th-century cemetery that had been moved in the 1950s — most of it, anyway.

NATIONAL CONSTITUTION CENTER

What: A nonprofit, interactive learning center and theater dedicated to increasing public understanding of the Constitution.

Headquarters: 525 Arch St., Philadelphia, PA 19106

Phone: 215.409.6600

Fax: 215.409.6650

On the Web: www.constitutioncenter.org

The Figures:
Employees: 157
Annual operating budget: $13 million
Total contributed income: 50 percent
Masterfile: 7,500 active donors.

The Mission: “The National Constitution Center is an independent, non-partisan, and non-profit organization dedicated to increasing public understanding of, and appreciation for, the Constitution, its history, and its contemporary relevance, through an interactive, interpretive facility within Independence National Historical Park and a program of national outreach, so that We the People may better secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” (From www.constitutioncenter.com)