Interview 1738 – Caption Index: 366
Yes, yes, unfortunately. 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
How much could they give?… Read More
At what level can they give? Blah, blah, blah. I don’t know. I get a little uncomfortable at the harshness or the impersonal approach of looking at, I mean, I know a lot these people. Read More
First project, Lions Pride. And got, fortunately, the key people, key leaders in the community responded and formed a board, raised the money. It did tee off a few people in Friends of the Zoo. I was sorry about that. And they may have felt a little threatened, but the… Read More
Is that organization still functioning today?… Read More
No, when I left, it carried on for a few years, but my immediate successor came in and did not work well with the board. And the board got a little disillusioned with the zoo at the time. So the board kind of, they didn’t disband. They just said, well,… Read More
That’s all happened since I left 21 years ago. Read More
So I thought, well, this is something new and different and be something for Friends of the Zoo to have a dynamic first project. So to try to, I think, fundraising, you need to make it interesting and get people involved. So I counted the stripes on a pair of… Read More
And they did. And of course we let them, we named one of the tigers Tabor, T-A-B-O-R, Topeka Board of Realtors. (chuckles) And listen to this spontaneous response. So we’re trying to make fundraising of interest. When we were raising the money for the concrete trees for the orangs, then… Read More
At the beginning, they were fabulous, but they got to the point where beyond some of these projects I just outlined, the board wasn’t structured to do more than that. They would get out and beat the bushes, but we didn’t have people on the board, the movers and shakers… Read More
I don’t know if it was negative press, because they just report what the proposal was and why, but it would get a letter to the editor or something. These days, oh my gosh, I feel sorry for zoos because everybody gets on the internet and the Twitter and just… Read More
Ultimately, how did the, well, how did the Topeka Zoo get its money, in the beginning, and as it progressed?… Read More