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

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

The earliest donors, Seiter says, “really were investing in a twinkle in people’s eyes.” One of the largest early gifts came from media magnate and Philadelphia philanthropist Walter Annenberg, who gave $10 million in 2000.

But even before that, million-dollar gifts were coming in as early as 1998, and there were those who began giving $200,000 annual gifts that same year. Board members had started giving annual gifts from the very start, in 1988.