And so incorporating conservation messages into that is key. However, they have to be short, concise, in this day and age, and impactful. You can’t write a paragraph about something on a graphic these days, because people don’t read it anymore. They don’t spend that much time at a graphic. Read More
And every time you pass by an exhibit, it would ding and give you a fun fact about that exhibit, and that animal, or whatever. This tiger’s pregnant, or did you know that rhinos, or whatever. Read More
They’re about building relationships and building trust for the people that you’re working with. Because, as you’ve said, people give to people. And that’s absolutely true. People give to the zoo because they trust, and respect, and have worked with, and have met and know the leadership there. And so… Read More
And then the board assisted whenever they could to open a door into a foundation, to go with us for a foundation ask, and things like that. Or a corporate ask. Read More
Would you say all newly constructed exhibits should incorporate a conservation conclusion, or any exhibit?… Read More
How active was your board of directors in getting money?… Read More
How did you try and get them to help us with fundraising?… Read More
Yeah. In the ideal situation, the board and the president and CEO are working together to fundraise. There’s some zoos where the Zoo Society does all the fundraising, and the president and CEO runs the zoo, and comes and helps with fundraising when asked, but the zoo society pretty much… Read More
Absolutely. I mean, euthanasia is something that is difficult for people to understand, and especially for management purposes. It’s not something that we would do at Pittsburgh. However, I’m not critical of people that have been in a situation where they felt that that was what they needed to do. Read More
But some species, particularly hoofstock, end up with a bunch of males in the population and can only use so much of that gene pool. And so we often end up, not often, but we end up with the situation of what to do with those surplus males, and whether… Read More
You mentioned that marketing and public relations were important, and fundraising, obviously. Read More
Whether they set up a trust or a 501C3 to help long term manage the facility or whatever, that they have a plan in place for if, heaven forbid, something should happen to them, and the children aren’t interested in it or something like that. So I think that’s really,… Read More
They started as a gift from a millionaire. Pittsburgh Zoo started as a gift from a philanthropist. And so a lot of our zoos that we think of today started out as private collections and then grew into the zoos that they are today. Read More
Does euthanizing of endangered species, surplus, genetic issues, et cetera, still pose a political problem for zoos and aquariums?… Read More
What are your thoughts about private zoos owned by people with means?… Read More
Will they survive the length of time municipal zoos have?… Read More
Well, it’s interesting, ’cause ZAA, I didn’t know about the number of private zoos in the country, but there’s literally a thousand private zoos in the country. And some of them are huge. I mean, it’s just amazing. I recently had the good fortune of visiting a zoo in Texas… Read More
In 10 years time, we raised almost $5 million for conservation projects, outside of the zoo. In just 10 short years. So I don’t have any idea how much we raised in 31, but a lot. But you have to use those. My philosophy at Pittsburgh Zoo is that we… Read More
So we make the capital dollars work towards conservation by bringing the visitors back, get the visitor money in operationally, kick it back out to research conservation projects. So capital dollars raised for capital projects do help our conservation projects, but it’s in kind of an indirect way, if that… Read More
And so when they’re funding those capital improvements, you can’t take that money and put it into operations, that’s fraud. You can’t do that. If they want to fund this exhibit, and they want to make that happen, then you have to do that. You have to build that improvement… Read More