 opportunity to travel across our state to visit a variety of cultural institutions and to get to know all kinds of people working with them and the challenges they face, which are often fundraising. And I also manage the content for our project's blog, I'm just going to do a quick shameless plug here. It's collectionsconversations.wordpress.com. A good deal of the information I'm presenting today has been a part of various postings there and several colleagues across the state deserve a shout out and thanks for their help with the material, specifically John Campbell, Kyle Briner, and Brandy Fields. And I want to thank you for asking me to be here today. We're so happy to have you and we will actually post a link to that website when we put this recording up. And Megan, how about you? Thank you, Jenny. Hello, everyone. My name is Megan Carr and I hold an master's degree in public history as well as an MBA major in finance and I've worked in the museum field for over 10 years. In six of those years, we're at the National Quilt Museum and I've been part of the curatorial department, the education department, operations, and most recently our development initiatives. Thank you so much. So before we dive into our presentations, we have just a few poll questions so we can get a better idea of our audience. Now, our first question, let me pull that over, is have you personally participated in the adoption campaign? And your choices here are yes, you participated in an adoption object or artifact and we'll use those terms interchangeably. Or yes, another type of adoption program like adopt an animal or no. All right, so a lot of people haven't. It's just good because we're talking about that today. Now let me pull over my next question and this is actually going to be a door prize question. So we will pull a name at random from those of you who respond and you guys will win a resource from the CDC bookshelf. So this question is what might compel you or has compelled you to adopt something? And this is just a chat box so feel free to put your answer in there and then hit enter. First, last minute in connection. I'll give this just a minute. Let me go ahead and pull over our next one so if you've already answered you have another question to look at. And we'll also make this a door prize question so two prizes. We'll pull a name at random. So has your institution tried and tried to adopt an object campaign? So yes or no? So a lot of those. Let me go ahead and find this first one. And so our last one is also a chat. And if you answered no which it looks like a lot of people have what prevents you from instituting a campaign like this. And again it's just a chat box. Resources looks like it's a pretty common response. So hopefully we'll cover that in our presentations today. Give this just a couple more minutes. Okay great. Let me go ahead and pull these over. Looks like you've just got a couple more people typing in. After this that's good. All right so we'll start with Adrienne's presentation which I'm pulling over right now. Now at any time during this presentation please feel free to ask your questions. If we can't get to it during the presentation we will definitely do that afterwards. Adrienne go ahead. The floor is yours. Okay thank you. All right I wanted to start out with this photo that I love of Angela Peterson who founded the Dollin Miniature Museum in High Point, North Carolina. I think this image illustrates the deep connection many of us feel for artifacts. And I noticed in the chat box on one of the poll questions several of you all mentioned that that would compel you, that emotional connection you might feel for an artist would compel you to adopt it. So keep that in mind when you're thinking about developing your own collection campaign. That connection I think is why most of us are in the museum field and there are many more folks out there who don't necessarily work in museums but who love artifacts and history. And that's an audience we want to attract and connect with through an adopt an artifact program. Remember the very premise of adoption is to promote emotional attachment to something. There is an implied sense of nurture in this type of sponsorship and that's the main idea I want to get across today that an artifact adoption is different or should be and could be different in some way than a regular appeal for funds to your audience. I've been learning about several artifact adoption programs in North Carolina through the outreach work we do in the C2C program here but before I get into those I want to talk a bit about another kind of adoption fundraiser. Years ago I adopted a manatee for my son as a gift and there are a couple of things we really liked about this program. And I'm going to try to use the little arrow here. I can. Okay, so I want you to take a look at this webpage that I was able to show here and check out what they're offering, what incentives this program is giving to adopt a manatee. And the first thing you get is something tangible, a tangible gift within the greater abstract gift of adoption. If you participated today you would receive a photograph of your manatee along with other information about manatee population preservation at the base level. And then, this is sort of a tiered program, if you donate a little bit more you get a calendar with manatee photos inside of it. Back when my family participated the program included a t-shirt and that was a great incentive for us because I think I gave it as a birthday gift and I think I could wrap up. My son has actually loved and worn that t-shirt for over seven years now. He wore it to bed when it was huge and now it's a little too tight, but I still saw him in it the other day. Think about that because if you have that emotional connection the tangible gift can really become a treasure for the person who receives it and can be great gifts for somebody who may have a lot of other things and doesn't need big gifts on their own. The second important idea that this webpage shows is that there are regular updates. So this program offers a newsletter and I think it comes out quarterly and you can learn about your manatee all throughout the year. So it's kind of a gift that keeps on giving. Okay, and I wanted to show you the four North Carolina programs that I'm aware of here. I've got a couple of folks I recognize from Greensboro. I don't know if they have a program, but if they do, we'd sure love to hear about it. And so these are the four and I've put the webpage alongside of each program. So I hope that you'll have some time later to look at these. I'm only really going to be focusing on one of the pages and I'll be moving on to discuss two others of these four programs later in the talk. The North Carolina Museum of History's Adopting Artifact program has a two-pronged approach and one of those programs is vastly more successful than the other. Here's the museum's webpage and it announces opportunities for individuals to adopt artifacts. But as you can see, the page posts no special incentives or deadlines and the response to this appeal has been minimal. The museum has had no donations, that's none, as a direct result of this webpage. When it first went up several years ago, a reporter in Greensboro wrote about the program and that article generated a few donations for the museum. So I think the lesson here is that active publicity is really important for these programs. The second prong has been to build relationships with groups interested in specific types of artifacts requiring conservation. As I understand it, this type of relationship started with groups of Confederate re-enactors or sons of Confederate veterans groups who came to the museum and complained to staff that they were not able to view the museum's extensive collection of 129 Confederate battle flags. Staff responded to those complaints by explaining the conservation needs and the associated expenses that prohibited the flag's display. The re-enactors then took it upon themselves to raise the necessary funds. Since 2003, the museum has had 14 Confederate battle flags conserved at an average cost of $7,500 each. Museum staff work with representatives from the interested groups to mutually select the next flag to be conserved. And once the conservation project is complete, the museum then stages an unveiling ceremony and you see one of those pictured here with the entire group. So the museum provides regular communication and a large recognition event for the group, and then within that group there may be additional recognition for individual donors to the cause. Some of that relationship-building success with the Confederate groups could be translated into individual appeals for adoption. Again, those regular updates in some way to recognize or even tangibly commemorate the adoption. The Save Our Hide campaign at the Museum of Anthropology at Wake Forest University is another program I want to discuss. It raised funds for the conservation of a piece very similar to the one pictured here, which is a Comanche hide in their collection, and it inaugurated what has become an annual conservation fund drive. Usually each annual appeal targets one specific piece. Although it's not titled as an artifact adoption program, the annual conservation fund drive achieves the same goal one piece at a time. In 2008, Save Our Hide raised over $1,300 from private donors, individuals, and this was mostly the result of a letter writing campaign to people who had exhibited past interest in the museum on some level with a time-limited appeal for fun. The program has two important features. Active publicity, not just the hope that someone interested will stumble upon a web page on artifact adoption, and the second thing is a deadline because it's set up as an annual drive, and that can be very useful for fundraising purposes. Of course, the $1,300 didn't cover the cost of conservation for the hide. I think it was over $5,000, but the museum then went on to receive additional state and federal grants to fund the project completely, and grantors were impressed by the community support for conservation that the Save Our Hide campaign had demonstrated. So let's get back to that Manatee adoption idea. It was a gift when I gave it to my son several years ago, and now I want to urge you to think about developing tangible gifts related to artifact adoption at your own institution, especially now that the calendar is turning toward Christmas. Here are a few incentives that can be wrapped up and put under a tree and could apply to any artifact within your organization's adoption program. For instance, you could develop a collage poster similar to the Doors of posters that were all the rage in the 1990s using artifacts from your collection, and you could title it something like Orphaned Artifacts in the Museum or look at Virginia's Top 10 Endangered Artifacts Campaign. They don't have an adoption component, but you could do something similar with a campaign style approach and include an individual adoption component where donors get incentives and regular updates on the conservation project. Based on that idea of nurture and emotional attachment that I've mentioned before, I would also urge you to consider offering products that can be customized from the individual artifact. Some of these ideas can be useful for a tiered adoption approach like the Manatee site uses, and here I'll end by coming back to the type of artifact I began with, a doll. Although dolls are very difficult objects from conservation and storage perspectives, they're also artifacts that some people form especially deep emotional connections to, like Angela Peterson we saw at the beginning. Portraits are up for adoption from two of our North Carolina programs, and the one pictured here on the left is one of the Orange County Historical Museum's perspective adoptees. On the right is a doll that a company called Creation Station makes, and will do small runs of figures that you can have customized for approximately $10 each wholesale. If you went to the AASLH annual meeting last year in Richmond, you probably got a sample Clara Barton doll, and here I've included a photo of their Abigail Adams doll because she's dressed in a similar way to the Orange County portrait subject, and it wouldn't take much to adapt that prototype to become a memento of the portrait adoption. Portraits of course can also be reproduced by printing them on canvas, so I do want to mention reproduction briefly, although it is an incentive that would probably need to be reserved for the highest level of donor to your program, and I've seen furniture reproductions as part of a high level donor option work at some museums, but again, these are much more expensive than some of the other products I've mentioned, like tattoos and bookmarks and t-shirts, and later you'll be getting a handout with some sources for some of the products that can help get you started. So you all may well have more ideas for adoption incentives, and I look forward to reading them as we get more into the discussion, and I want to thank you for this chance to present. Thank you so much, Adrienne. Okay, let me go ahead and pull this off. And as she mentioned, there is a handout, and I'll post a link to that, but it will also be with a recording of this webinar. Let me go ahead and pull this off for Megan's presentation. There we go. All right, Megan, whenever you're ready. Thank you, Jenny. Okay, well, I just wanted to go through and give you an overview of the Adopt-A-Cult program that we started at the National Cult Museum. What we've done is originally, if everybody remembers back in 2008 when the original economic downturn started, the museum had just started a capital campaign, and in working with the fundraising firm that we were consulting with, they kind of gave us the idea that maybe slowing down and focusing specifically on things that would appeal to donors. Many people don't want to give just general money to the organization. They want to have, like Adrienne said, some kind of connection, and that's what we're kind of focusing on. We wanted to find ways to entice donors to give to the museum, and especially the Quilts need conservation, as any other artifact in our organization needs. Conservation is critical. The care of it to make sure that everything is ongoing for future generations. So what we've done is set up in slowing down our capital campaign. We had a lot of fundraising brainstorming sessions, and our Adopt-A-Cult project actually came out of one of those sessions. And although it's not our biggest fundraising project, it's the one that hits home the most. It really strikes the chord with a lot of different people. Many people want to be involved and help conserve something that's dear to their heart. The National Quilt Museum focuses on Quilts from 1980 to the present, and currently our collection has about over 320 Quilts in it. And many people that come through our organization wind up seeing Quilts and many of our visitors are Quilters or cultural enthusiasts. But they either all know the artist or maybe are from the same city or state as the artist, and that kind of strikes home. It's like, oh, I know that person or I know of that guild, and that's what they kind of focus on. They really want to be part of something that they have a connection with. They want to help preserve something for future generations. And that's what we found has worked really well for us. And here is one of our little flyers that we have out at our front desk. This is an older one. The original program was basically brainstormed during that winter of 2008-2009, and the program was kicked off in the summer of 2009. This would have been around the fall. Now what we've done is gone through, and you can see where we had the Quilts listed that have been adopted. This flyer was posted at our front desk and given to all the different visitors that came through. And unlike what other people have done with their adopt an object project, is we only have one level at the present time. We're probably going to do some rebamping, but right now it's a $250 donation, and that cares for a quote for one year. That takes care of anything that has to do with that particular quote, whether that quote needs new storage boxing and tissue or paying part of our curator salary. You can do anything with this money as long as it is part of caring for that object or quote in our case. And just to date, we've actually had 12 Quilts have been adopted. Several have been renewed since the kickoff of this campaign, and it's been excellent because it's been over $3,000 that's been donated for the care of our collection, and it's made everything very easy for our curator to take care of everything because she just knows she has money. It's very helpful for those who have tight budgets that are really worried about their general operating funds and taking care of paying the electric bill and their staff. It's nice to know that there is earmarked money available for the curator to take care of the collection. We've been very, very happy with the response to this. And the majority of people that have given so far have been people that have a vested interest in the organization. Now the benefits to the museums or organizations actually focuses on the fact that it is so easy a program to implement. I mean, for those who really worry about whether or not there are the resources available or having it be problematic, it's really not. The nice thing about an adoptive object program is that anybody who wants to be part of conserving an object can be part of it. You can do it online, you can do it with people that come through your museum or your organization can be part of it. We found it to be very, very easy to implement. It's nice to know that that money goes specifically to the curatorial department and you just want to make it easy for anybody to donate, anybody to renew. I really enjoy this project and I know that we're going to continue doing it in our organization and I hope it works for others as well. Now the only thing that I really would like to caution people on is the fact that it's temporarily restricted money. Now most people realize this but it's nice to reiterate it because I know that when we have our audit, our auditing firm comes in and takes care of making sure that everything is working the way it should be. It's nice to know that you have an accountant who knows what they're doing, they take the money, it's put into the account, that account is restricted for care of the collection. What you really want to do if you're planning on implementing this type of a project is make sure that you have someone who's going to handle all the processing of incoming donations. Other than your curator, you really want to keep your curator informed of what's been donated. Now what we really have found to work for us is unless you have a lot of objects that are being donated, if you actually have a lot of objects that are being adopted on a daily basis, if you get lucky and that happens, your curator may not be able to handle it. But our organization, our curator is actually the one who handles all of the incoming donations. She takes care of processing and marking which quotes are adopted, making sure their thank you letters are sent out. She takes care of all of that and then passes the money along the checks to the bookkeeping department and they actually handle putting the money into the bank where it should be. Now the best thing that we've found for getting people involved, train your volunteers and your staff to pitch the program in a compelling way. When you've got your docent or your volunteers or if your staff is out giving a presentation, make sure that they know that when explaining the project, you really want to tell people that it is for the conservation and care of these artifacts. People want to take care of their history and that's where we stand the best chance of gaining people's interest. People that come through, they follow them over the quote, they'll follow them over the artifact and if they know that it's available, that they can help that particular artifact, they're more likely to do it. We've had great success just in the gallery with people talking to visitors. That's where we get most of our donations. It's just someone who sees a quote and says, that's beautiful, I really want to help take care of that. Your website. Websites are critical to website social media, your eBAS campaign. They're critical to getting the word out. On our website we have ways to donate listed in three different places. It's backdoor into different parts of the site. They can be routed to taking care of that particular clill. That's another way that's worked really well. You really want to make it easy for people to donate in specifically ways that they could do that. If they can do it at our museum, if they decide they want to do it right then, they could sign up at the front desk. Our admissions person would call our curator, she would come out, walk them through and give them a personal touch. That really helps. People really, really want to feel that what they're doing is appreciated and having someone specially come out to talk to them really helps. If they're doing it online, I can't stress how wonderful PayPal has been for us. If your organization doesn't have a PayPal set up, I really would recommend that. Because that's been phenomenal. We've sent out eBAS for different things, not just for the Adopt-A-Quilt project, but it really does work. When they get that, you can see pictures of quotes that could be up for adoption. That's where we've actually gotten some as well because people can just click that button. They can put it on their credit card. They get everything from our curator with their acknowledgement letter, with their certificates of adoption. Everything comes to them. It makes them feel appreciated. It makes them feel good that they're helping protect these objects. Another thing that's really helped our campaign is just having signage in the gallery. We've got certain little signs up that are Adopt-Me. In the picture here, the Fashionable Ladies of the 20s, you'll notice a little certificate underneath the gallery label. That's the certificate of adoption for that quilt. People see that and are like, oh, well, this quilt is adopted. How do I get involved? Then they're asking your volunteers and your staff how to become involved. I agree with Adrienne that marketing is very critical to this and actually getting the word out, and this is just one of those ways you can do it. The last thing that you could do is any time that your staff is going out to make a presentation, make sure to mention it. Mention that your collection needs care, and that way they can kind of get involved that way. It seems like it really works for us, and we've really enjoyed it. Now, for your adopters, people who are giving, they're going to be individuals, they're going to be families, they're going to be organizations, not everybody is going to be adopting for themselves. Some of the quilts have been adopted in another person's name. We've had families give adoptions away as Christmas presents. That's another way we've done. People, a whole guild have actually adopted several of our quilts where they know an artist, and they decided to go ahead and do it in their name. Like, I've got here reasons that people like to give. People just fall in love with an object. We've had things given away in memory of someone. Some people just like to help preserve. Other quilters, in our case, would really want to help preserve those. Another way you can market is actually go out and solicit people to adopt an object, or corporations, or doctor's office, lawyers office. Those really have been very helpful. They're actually very willing to adopt an object because they get a little certificate with their name on it by the quilt. And that way your people come through. It's like, oh, I know Dr. Jones. He's a great guy, and look at what he's done. He's helping preserve. If he's helping preserve something, maybe I should too. We're creatures that really enjoy going with the flow, and then many people will help out in certain ways like that. And just like I said before, what people are going to receive is you have your adopters. They're receiving their acknowledgment. They give an adoption certificate themselves. We give away an 8 by 10 photo of the quilt, so that's as close to reproduction as we can manage to get. They get a copy of their gallery label. It's kind of nice to be listed in the newsletter and in the gallery showing that you're helping the museum in some tangible, very specific way. And we've really, this has been a fantastic project for us, and I would like really to encourage everyone to start their own. People really like to, they like to give money, but they want to give it to a specific cause, so you just have to make this relevant to them and make it really something that's very important to them, and that it's a necessary thing to do. I guess that would conclude my presentation. Thank you so much. So we'll just jump right into the questions we have a couple coming through. Just to follow up on your point about the Certificate of Adoption, we did have a question about what incentives you give away again from the Quilt Museum. You said the Certificate of Adoption, and in the photo, are there any other? Basically, that's pretty much all that we've done. I mean, we give away the, let's see, they are listed on our newsletter and on our website. They are, I apologize. They get their adoption certificate, and then the little mini adoption certificate goes right next to the Quilt, so they're listed in the gallery. And a lot of them, your thank you note, and just basically the fact, I mean, most people give this away for the satisfaction of helping care for that Quilt. And we've had several that have renewed, so it's worked for us. Fantastic. So let's see. We have a question from Indianapolis. How do you decide which objects are available for adoption, and who gets to make that decision? Was that for me or for Adrienne? Either. Okay. Adrienne, you want to take that one? Well, I think in the case of the History Museum, the curators and conservators within the museum identify which objects really need conservation. And unlike the program that Megan discussed at her institution, the ones I'm familiar with here in North Carolina are artifacts that definitely need to be conserved before that they can even be on exhibit for any length of time. And so in the interesting cases with that 26th Regiment of Confederate reenactors, where they have the relationship now with the museum, they've paid money to conserve several Quilts, and representatives from that group will work with the conservator and curator on staff to choose what, out of these 20 or 30 Quilts, which one does your organization want to fund this time? And that's the way it's decided. I think in other institutions here in North Carolina that I've worked with, it's been staff knowing that there's a real conservation need and that this particular object is of the significance that we want to invest this money and time into fundraising for it. Great. Thank you. See, we had Kristen who weighed in in the chat box on how to do adopt and object programs for outdoor sculpture. And then we have another question from Amy who wants to know, how do you market the different Quilts, Megan, if your collection isn't all online? And you touched a little bit about it in the presentation, but could you kind of elaborate a little more? Sure. The way our curator has it set up is all of our Quilts are listed on the Quilt Index. And I think it's QuiltIndex.org, and our entire collection is online there. And what our curator does is when someone wants to express his interest in adopting a Quilt and they're not at the museum, what should direct them to do is go to the Quilt Index and then they can just browse our collection and pick whichever one they'd like to adopt. Now, if someone's actually, let me rephrase, I'm sorry, our marketing director likes to run a campaign. She'll pick a Quilt, or she and the curator will pick a Quilt, and they'll put it online, and then they'll do an e-blast about it saying this particular Quilt is available for adoption. If you would like to adopt it, please click the e-mail address and contact our curator. Okay. And let me just follow up with you, Megan. We have a question about the gallery labels. How successful do you think they've been? They've been really successful in generating interest. We've only had, I'd probably say that, well, probably about half of them actually have come from visitors that actually saw a label and then asked a volunteer or a staff member about the adoption program. Okay. Megan, I have a question to tie in with that. Do you ever have situations where multiple people want to adopt the same piece, and then you have these layers of thank-you labels on the exhibit, or has that been a problem? Well, the way we actually have it set up is only one person can adopt it per year. We actually had that with people at the exhibit, and we're like, well, this one's been adopted this year, but, you know, we have all these other quotes that need some care, too. Would you like to adopt one of those? And we actually have our collection book laminated in the gallery. So if a quote is already been adopted, they can flip through the book and they can be shown which quotes haven't been adopted yet. Adrienne, I have a question for you from Susan Webster in Greensboro. She's curious about the levels of donating. Do you keep it open-ended from your experience in the different programs that you have seen what's worked out best, having the set number, or having a more open-ended amount? I think that if you develop products that you want to offer as incentives, it would be good to have some very discrete levels. And then the biggest level could be open-ended, but to offer those incentives with specific levels. Okay. And that might depend on the price of the incentive. For instance, the doll that I showed might cost about $10 wholesale. So you probably want a level to be, I would guess, at least $30, $35 to offer that chunk of an incentive and maybe more. Okay. We have a lot of questions, actually, about where the money goes to. If it goes straight to the object or it can be pulled into one fund, what have you guys found to be most effective or the most often used? Adrienne, if you want to start off on that question. Yes. I think the projects that I've looked at kind of have an easier answer than maybe Megan's project with that. I think the projects I've looked at, the money goes to conservation for that specific object. Okay. So it goes to one direct line of funding. And Megan, is that also how it works at the Quilt Museum? Not necessarily. If we have something that's in need of specific conservation, then it would be earmarked that way. But when we went through this project with our auditor, she explained that as the way everything was written and since it was going towards care of collection, the money could be used for anything to care for the object. So essentially it is being used specifically for the object, but you can't order just one free box. So when we do it, the curators orders for care of the collection. And what we were told by our auditor is that she could use the money in any way for the care of the collection the way we have ours set up. Okay. And that answers Marie's question from Massachusetts of whether the money is ever pulled for a more needy quilt. So that answers that. And then we had a couple of those. Another question we have from Jonathan in Chicago is, do you have to spend the funds raised on the adopted object? We got that through general conservation. Let's see. We've got a couple of those. Okay. Jonathan, from Susan Webster, are promotional funds taken from adoption programs or is it part of the institutional marketing budget? That's a great question. That is a great question. I think with the kind of ideas that I've thrown out, it would be deducted from the donation amount. And so in fact, people, when they would get a receipt for tax purposes, they'd get a receipt for the amount of their donation minus the cost of whatever incentive they're receiving. Okay. And Megan, how does that work at the Quilt Museum? Is that the marketing efforts? Does that come out of the adoption program or is that part of your marketing campaign? We actually have it as part of our marketing campaign. So that way, whatever they give is fully tax deductible. We've already just kind of rolled the marketing part into a marketing budget. Okay. And Adrienne, I have a question for you from Kate in Massachusetts. Have you found that this sort of campaign works more effectively in museums of a certain size? She's curious about staff levels and budgets. I think that's true. And you think you do need to have some people find time. And I know that one of the organizations I've talked about is the Orange County Historical Museum. It's very, very small. There are no full-time staff members, though there are several part-time, I think two part-time staff members. And they have it on their website, and that's really about all they've done. And I don't think they've done any active publicity in any way, even on their social media. And they really haven't had much response, unfortunately, although they have some great artifacts up for adoption. And I think if they could kind of market it more and develop a few simple incentives like note cards, I think I would want to do that. If I could get some note cards, I would. And I didn't say enough about note cards, maybe, but that's really one of my favorite incentives because they're easy to do. You can do them of all the artifacts you have up for adoption. Or you could do a pack of just one artifact. And you're giving them to somebody who's likely to distribute them to other of their associates who also might be interested. So there's sort of a little bit of built-in publicity, at least hopefully, with that product. And it's also pretty inexpensive to produce. Great. Thank you. Now, Megan, I have a question. A lot of people have been wondering about if you don't reach the level that you need to conserve a certain object, what do you do next if you have a certain dollar amount and the adoption doesn't reach that? Have you had an experience doing this with a particular quote? Actually, no. Because one of the things that we have since our collection is 1980 to present, none of our quilts really need major conservation yet. And so what our program is is proactive. We are caring for all of our quilts on the basic what they need today level. And that way we can avoid any major conservation issues at a later date. Okay. And Adrienne, do you have any knowledge about what other institutions in North Carolina might do if their adoption program doesn't meet the cost? Are you then, as Jonathan says in Chicago, are you obliged to conserve it and cover the cost? That's a great question. And I think that there are other things you can do to care for the object as the Quilt Museum is doing if you don't have enough money to move forward with that conservation. But I also want to restate a point that I mentioned earlier. In the case of Wake Forest University's Museum of Anthropology, they did not raise enough to conserve their piece, but the amount they raised and the number of individual donations they had showed such a level of community support that it gave them a really strong application for federal and state level grants for conservation. So basically what they did was table it for that year. They didn't raise enough for the full conservation. And then they were able to continue working on getting funds through grants with that conservation campaign as a past achievement, and that really helped them along. So I think that you can do some work to stabilize or at least to store as in the Quilt Museum buying those very, very expensive textile boxes. And you can put money toward the care in that way. You might not get the full conservation done. Some steps that I think you can take to put the donations you received toward that purpose directly. Definitely, and it sounds like one of the possibly intangible benefits is that you are creating support for an object if it's not monetarily. You are creating awareness for it. Right, and if you're giving updates to your owners, you can be very upfront with, say, you needed $5,000 to conserve this Comanche Hyde. We were thrilled to raise $1,300. We're going to have to set that project aside and pursue grants. And that way, they understand what's going on. They contact you if they have a problem. If they really want to see it conserved, maybe they'll send another couple thousand your way so you can get it done. Thank you. We have a question from Wendy in North Dakota who's wondering if you know of any examples of this type of program working for the care of archeological objects. None that I know of in North Carolina are having archeological objects up for adoption. But that's an interesting idea. And we do have a big underwater archeology program going on on the coast of North Carolina. They're doing any adoption, but that's certainly the kind of thing where there's a lot of publicity about these objects being salvaged from shipwrecks. And there could be a lot of potential there with that type of program that's getting a lot of excitement among the media and in the popular imagination. Okay, we have about 10 minutes left to the next question. Let's go ahead and just pull our survey over. If you all could just take a few minutes to fill it out. It really helps us shape these webinars and to figure out what works and doesn't. So if you just have a second, please go ahead and click on that right now. And I will also post Adrienne's handouts. You have that, and again this will be available when we post the recording of this webinar. So you can just go ahead and click on those links. And we'll move on to our next question. Keep them coming. We have a few more minutes. So I thought this was just a great question from Linda and Jefferson City. Do you all know of any adoption programs that have involved Kickstarter or programs like that? So those are those online almost forums where people can easily give. I think Kickstarter is a great idea, although there was a discussion recently on museum. It's not working well for nonprofits and it's something like Indiegogo is better. But the thing that I think is appealing about Kickstarter for adoptions is that there's a deadline and you have a certain length of time to contribute to this project or it won't happen. So I think it sounds like a really good fit and I'm not sure whether or not it works for nonprofits. So if anyone out there knows, please enlighten the rest of us. Okay. Sorry about that, Kay. Right. We haven't been involved in Kickstarter, but we have started using what's called PowerToGive.org. And I know it's regional. I know that Kentucky and southern Indiana and Georgia and other states in the southeast that can use this program. But it's similar to Kickstarter. It is the limited time to give. But what it's set up to do is no matter what, if you didn't miss your goal, they still send all the money to you. And it's not like a use it or lose it kind of deal. It's been pretty good. We're starting to look into it and we've signed up for it. Now it's geared more towards arts organization or arts museum, but they have some conservation in there. So if you've got some particular objects that might be, it may be something to at least look into because it is extremely easy to use. Okay. Now, Megan, I have a question for you. Let's see. Let me find it. So have you guys considered or had any success in offering a collections versus a single object program? So you have adopt a quote. Have you considered doing an adopt a collection? Well, actually, it's not a bad idea. No, we haven't done that. We have our main collection. We have a miniatures collection. And we have an education collection. It's one of the three that we have right now. And I can see that that would be a good idea. We could probably set that up. In general, we've only had it set up for single quilts at the moment. Okay. And Adrienne, have you seen that with any of the North Carolina institutions, collections focused adoption? Not specifically, but again, that Confederate groups and what they do is sort of like that because they're aware of the entire collection, 129, I think, Confederate battle flags. And so they're sort of gradually working toward conserving the ones that require conservation. And that's just an ongoing relationship with those groups. And I don't know of any instance where there's sort of a subset of things that's up for adoption. Okay. And we have a question from Hawaii who she's wondering how do you keep your donors coming back? How do you keep energizing them and re-energizing the program each year? Megan, do you want to answer that? And then Adrienne, you can weigh in. Sure. What we have is when a quilt is getting ready to come off its adoption, what we do is our curator will send a letter to the original donor and say, thank you so much for your previous donations and caring for this wonderful quilt. Would you like to continue and do it again next year? We've had probably, I think, three or four that have redone or re-upped their donations for the next year. Now, one of the people that had said that had picked a different quilt the previous year because the one they wanted was actually already adopted, they wanted to be notified when that quilt needed to be adopted again. So that's what our curator did, was she sent a letter to that person and said, this quilt's now available. Did you want to take care of it? And that actually went through, too. So it's amazing the people that actually continue to want to be part of this project. They really do want to preserve specific objects. I think that's a great example of relationship building. I think that you can use this artifact adoption as a way to really engage with those audiences that can form emotional connections to artifacts and really care about specific pieces in your collection. As far, and you can mix it up, every year you can offer a different set of artifacts or like the Wake Forest University Museum does, you can just focus on one artifact that needs to be adopted each year and direct all your energy to that one artifact. And hopefully, as you're doing a different artifact and its conservation needs, you can also generate media interest to broadcast that opportunity and that fundraising needs throughout your community. Adrienne, I have a question for you from Amy. This might be a little of a challenging one. So she's wondering for signage on an adoption program, the recognition, if you're in a historic house museum where you don't really have the option to put up a sign, what would you recommend doing to recognize people? I think that's where your website comes in really well. It might not in itself make people aware of your program, but the website also, I think a point Megan mentioned, was that if you train your docents and gallery guides to mention the Adopt an Artifact program, then you can maybe also have them discuss that and maybe have a flyer or some sign in an entryway or in a less obtrusive space that lives in your donors to the program so that you're right, it's going to destroy the visual and the atmosphere to put a label right there inside the period room setting beside a piece, but there may be some other donor recognition area where that's possible and if you train your docents and gallery guides to discuss the product and how important it is, then they can also refer visitors to that wall or donor tree with leaves and names or some kind of thing in an entryway that you can recognize donors. Great, thank you. Kristin McKay had a question earlier about the time frame for collecting money and I'm assuming also the length of adoption. Megan, yours is for a year, is that correct? Right, our items can be adopted for one year. And Adrian, have you seen that similar timeframe in other institutions? There are those annual fund drives that Wake Forest University does and I think that a year is a really good workable timeframe. The other organizations I've seen do not have any kind of deadline and I think that that's important to think about and figure out a way where a deadline can work because that's sort of an incentive in itself. Most of us work on deadlines and if it's something that can easily be postponed, you might do that. Well, that's a good idea. I might do that someday, but maybe not now. Maybe I'll wait and see if they'll give out some numbers and then I'll send some money. So you could also tie the deadline into the incentive availability and that would be a way to make it a deadline even if the conservation level funding hasn't been achieved. Great, and Jonathan has a question. He says, what is the dollar range for the adoption cost? Tens or hundreds of dollars? Jonathan, maybe you could type in and let us know, do you meet adoption costs for those who are donating, who are doing the adoption or the cost of instituting an adoption program? But along those lines, Megan, could you give us some insight about what some of the considerations and costs you need to figure into of maintaining a program like this? Gosh, as far as the costs of maintaining this program, really, it's pretty minimal to us the way we've got it set up. Our curator handles all of her, handling all the acknowledgments and deciding if there needs to be another quilt that needs to be advertised, marketed as being available for adoption. So it's just part of her daily routine and our marketing director works with her and just actually creates the e-blast and sends it out. So neither one of them really spends a huge amount of time on this project. Now, we probably could market it better and get more of our quilts adopted but what we've been doing so far has worked for us. So it sounds like with institutions that have a smaller budget, this is still doable. Oh, I would think so. And then Jonathan was saying he was curious actually about the donor costs, what ranges. And, Megan, you said you guys started 250, correct? We only have the one level. 250 will take care of a year. Okay, and Adrienne, where are some of the ranges that you've seen in North Carolina? I think that you want to encourage for history museums, you're looking at a lot of places with little budgets and you want to make it available at some level for very small donations. And I would, that's why I would recommend a kind of tiered approach to incentives to sort of give people who might be interested and might want to donate $20 to maybe donate $35 and get a calendar or a poster. And meanwhile, your organization may be putting a few dollars into producing that. But you can sort of tier the donations and the levels that way. But I would definitely keep it open to the lowest level and just maybe have them receive a newsletter because they may be future donors. And it's a beginning to a relationship-building process that you want to keep going and growing. All right, great. Well, it's 3 o'clock guys, so we're out of time. We just missed a few questions. And you guys are more than welcome to continue the conversation in our discussion boards on the community. Thank you so much to Adrienne and Mayen for being here today and your presentations and answering all those great questions. Our next webinar will be Wednesday, September 26th at 2 p.m. Eastern, and we'll focus on the different types of odors within collections. And we're also working on our entire fall schedule and we'll announce those dates as soon as possible. Again, please take some time to fill out our survey, which is located in the upper left-hand corner. And then a recording of this webinar and all of the resources we talked about today, including some of the ones you mentioned in the chat, will be filed in the community in just a little bit. So you can go to ConnectingToCollections.org and find that. Again, thank you all so much. I hope you all have a fantastic afternoon. Thank you, Jenny, and thanks for having me. Have a great day. Participated with ideas.