Interview 3367 – Caption Index: 509
(chuckling) How did you view the media?… Read More
(chuckling) How did you view the media?… Read More
They don’t simply support projects that they don’t really believe in. They got to, they’ve got to really buy on to the project. And so there’s not a, there’s not a lot of gray in Nebraskans. They either like you, or they don’t like you. Now with like you and… Read More
How’d you nurture that relationship?… Read More
Well, I think, yeah, basically by being pretty honest and straightforward. You know, you never want to get, you never want to get absolutely caught in a lie with the media, or, or, you know, and, and it hasn’t always been, you know. I’ve on two different occasions in my… Read More
You know, and, and certainly we work at finding things that are interesting for them to publish. And the old, that old cliche I mentioned earlier about, you know, kids, animals, and a good fire. Why, you know, if you can team kids and animals up, it makes for a… Read More
And it’s a lot easier when you’ve got a product and a specific project to sell other than just raising pure endowment dollars is really tough to do. Read More
What makes a Nebraska such a giving community?… Read More
It just is. I think, you know, Nebraskans are kind of unique in, you know, I mean, they’re, you know, they’re kind of rabid football fans. If you’re going to do something like the jungle or the desert gnome or the (mumbles), that is kind of the biggest and best… Read More
Has it been difficult to do?… Read More
Endowment dollars, endowment dollars are the toughest hardest dollars to raise. What we’ve, what we’ve ultimately figured out and, and have done is that we put an endowment on every new project that’s not going to be a profit center, like, you know, a new gift shop or a new… Read More
Somebody leave you a 40 million in a will?… Read More
Something you didn’t expect?… Read More
Well, Pete, Pete Kiewit, you know, who contributed that quarter of a million when he, in his will, he left us $1 million. We’ve had some other behest in wills. The one thing, you know, the, the Hubbard family donation, as I said, circled around after, after 23 years and… Read More
Yeah. And over the years, obviously, I would say endowments are the gift that keeps on giving. Yep. You’ve been able to increase the endowment. Yeah, substantially, yeah. Read More
Did you ever use the political process to raise money from the state or anything?… Read More
We tried with the state a number of things. I mean, when we first came in, the state was not charging us sales tax on our admissions, memberships and all that. And somewhere down the line, somebody said, hey, there’s nothing that prohibits us from doing that. We’ve tried. And… Read More
And pitching them on a hotel motel tax, which we’ve used for marketing and, you know, a number of things that way. And you know, that, that brings in about $300,000 a year. At one time it was bringing in a half a million a year, pretty regularly. But that… Read More
Were there any surprise donations that just came out of nowhere?… Read More
Number one, cause I had a restaurant on it. She said, I’m not interested in selling hotdogs. Let somebody else build a restaurant. Let somebody else build your greenhouses. You know, she kinda went down down the line. She said, I don’t, you’ve got that big orientation building on the… Read More
And she said, so do you think you can do that boy?… Read More