Update on the move to Gray

[Wayne Laepple]

http://news.keepmecurrent.com/gray-getting-railway-project-on-track/

[Glenn Christensen]

Thanks for the link Wayne!

Best Regards,
Glenn

[Joe Fox]

Interesting read.

[Brian Hardy]

From my far away place in Australia, I cheer on the efforts of all organizations that help preserve the wonderful world of Maine two footers. So I followed Wayne’s link, read it with interest and was encouraged by the contents.

I then thought I would go and have a look at Maine Narrow Gauge Museum site and check out their 2015 Report to see their fund raising progress and the picture there is not quite so rosy.

Now I am assuming that there is no separate entity that is stacking away their Gray relocation funds off the main accounts and if that assumption is right then Donations and Grants for 2015 have dropped some $20K from the 2014 level and their 2015 net income, which is calculated after counting in donations, is a loss of $32,548 which is nearly twice the loss they recorded in 2014.

Essentially rather than building up their finances, they seem to be going backwards financially at an increasing rate and this is despite their impressive growth in operating revenue. To me this is a worrying trend which might give a Gray Town Councillor doing due diligence some cause for caution.

Brian

[Joe Fox]

One thing that may help as well would be to show the money raised, and a project goal.

I have been told by many that they don't have a lot of money set aside for the move. If they really have $500,000 already that is a decent start to their 12 million. I guess my point is if they hope to receive large amounts of money from others, many people want to see a public form of donation totals so far, and as a lady said in the article, a breakdown on how money will be spent.

[Wayne Laepple]

Actually, in large, professionally-run fund raising activities, it is not unusual to go to large donors first, in what is known as the "silent phase." They try to get 50% of the needed funds that way before going public. Libraries, art museums, symphony orchestras, hospitals, public television/radio, etc. do their fund-raising this way. In one situation of which I know, an individual donated $500,000 to a $7.5 million project, and then she offered to match the next $500,000 raised. The dollars just flew in, and the necessary funds were had in less than a year!

[Joe Fox]

Oh. Interesting. Hopefully things are  successful for them. It would be nice to have them only 20 minutes from my house.

[Bill Baskerville]

Perhaps we should apply Wayne's idea to ourselves.  Maybe our grant writing activities could be supplemented with some part time fund raising, or perhaps we could recruit a retired fund raiser who is also a railroad enthusiast.  I don't know how to find such an individual, but perhaps someone else does.  The nice thing about fund raising is a lot of it can be accomplished from afar.