We’re dead center target for hurricanes. Hurricanes come up, go across the tip of the Yucatan Peninsula. And many of the models frequently have them coming right up the mouth of the Rio Grande River. And the Gladys Porter Zoo sits less than a mile from the Rio Grand River. Read More
How difficult was it to get the funding for that?… Read More
Was most of it from the Gladys Porter era or not?… Read More
Summer safari. Yes. One of our education curators several years ago came up with this and basically it’s where you, people are always looking for things for their children to do in the summertime. And so we started programs half day and full day programs. And some of the full… Read More
What was your vision, as director for education within the zoo and how did you start to develop that vision?… Read More
Well, you can’t justify a zoo if you don’t include education as one of your pivotal roles and the animals that we have simply serve as ambassadors. We can’t hope to repopulate the world’s wild places with animals. We can maintain animals as a hedge against disaster, but we cannot… Read More
And when they walk in and they hand you a list and say, here’s a list there of these people combined are willing to give half million dollars to the zoo. You need to structure a program and ask ’em for it. And that’s a pretty good start. And in… Read More
Primarily on the board, we have had add two different full-time and two different part-time fundraisers workforce. And in most instances we found out that all they did was put together the lists or to get together the information for grant requests. And it was still, we had to have… Read More
These are the people, and our most effective tool in a couple of instances has been having an initial survey done of the community leaders and of the board to identify, well, now, if we did this project, would you be willing to support at such and such a level?… Read More
Did you then feel the need to hire people, or did you just depend on your board?… Read More
They were all personal friends of Gladys Porter, and while she was still alive, they would come. We had Miss Kitty from “Gun Smoke Fame”, Amanda Blake was a stalwart and she was there at least four or five different fundraising times. And I got to know and adore her. Read More
And it’s takes a lot of work, takes mainly organization. And it’s means getting a team of people, getting ’em interested, having a format that they know that works, deviating from it enough each year, so that it doesn’t seem quite the same each year, but all sticking to having… Read More
Do you think it was a big success because you could bring in and did bring in Jimmy Stewart, Betty White, Marlon Perkins, Amanda, you brought these people in or did they just naturally want to come to this?… Read More
And did you have any strategies that you were implementing to try and promote the zoo?… Read More
The secret to fundraising is getting people who know people to go and do the asking, not the professional person. So it was identify peers or people that would have influence with other people to go and make the ask, so to speak. That’s not novel our zoo that’s novel,… Read More
We still maintained and wanted to keep the endangered theme. But on the other hand, we realized that there was more to it than that. And the fact that we were more and more dependent upon our gate, that we had to do things, maybe have some things that were… Read More
How comfortable were you with in this new role?… Read More
And what was it under you?… Read More
And so being a tough old boot that he was, he ran over and smacked the polar bear in the nose, and the polar bear went back into the pool and he went around behind and pulled the plug and lowered the water level so they couldn’t get out. So… Read More
When you became director, did this mission change or was it modified?… Read More