It’s tough to raise money in Topeka, let me respond to private money in a minute. We don’t have a lot of corporate entities and the ones we do have have headquarters someplace else. For example, there’s a huge, a huge Goodyear Tire & Rubber plant here. They build tires… Read More
There’s not a lot of other entities to go to. Private money is, the zoo, we worked hard, nobody gives you money. I learned that, nobody gives you money, you earn it. And we worked hard to make our zoo an institution worthy of receiving gifts and an institution where… Read More
But after I left, the one thing that happened was I think the zoo lost its position in the fundraising structure for a variety of reasons. And once you’re out of that position, somebody else comes in and fills that void just like that. Read More
Were there any surprise donations that surprised you?… Read More
Not really in this community. The political process in this community, at least in my tenure as zoo director, didn’t really lend itself well for raising money. I mean, the Huff ‘n Puff Hot Air Balloon Rally did, but not the political process. I mean, except we never did have… Read More
Was it tough to secure private money?… Read More
Yes, it’s tough to pick up because we don’t have a lot of potential, oh, you mean private money?… Read More
You know what?… Read More
Even though she may have been romanced and massaged by the board and the staff, at some point, the director’s gotta show up and say, we really are interested in you being part of this project. So yes, it is important. We gotta do it. Read More
Were you able to ever use the political process to raise money?… Read More
Do you think it’s become more of a necessity for zoo directors?… Read More
Yes, yes, unfortunately. Read More
Even though your board people are the ones asking or you may even have a staff person or a department that structures all of this, at some point, the director should be involved, because you are the director because of the status of your position, you don’t want to use,… Read More
Mrs. Gotrocks, or whoever. Read More
I don’t know how much they’re worth, but I know a lot of these people, but I felt uncomfortable looking at them and evaluating how much can we ask for them?… Read More
But the way it worked was the foundation, the foundation board members, and they were good at this, they would ask for the money, I went along as a zoo director to have the fancy plan, to here’s Lions Pride. Here’s how it’s gonna be unique or whatever. So I… Read More
She said, “Well, sir, you’ve seen the presentation it’s a great project. We’d like to ask you for $500,000. (Gary chuckling) I laughed out of my chair. I almost felt like saying, I didn’t know she was gonna ask for that much. But this guy had been hit up so… Read More
But it got to the point where that was not the most fun. I spent a lot of time in these preparations and in these presentations, that’s not really what I like to do, but it’s important these days. Read More
How did you adjust to fundraising?… Read More
I liked the excitement of a fundraising project. Like the tiger thing, which was, or the branch, something that’s got a fun dimension to it. But the cold hard the structured way of doing it, get the client list, get the potential, get the list of all the potential people… Read More