I've been thinking about this quite a bit, if anyone has seen the website for the Computer History Museum in California, that place both makes me drool and kind of disgusted at the same time.
For the record, CHM is a good partner of VCF. :)
We all know that an organization like that must have gotten quite a bit in corporate funding to help setup their displays.
Correct, and we're absolutely working toward that. We just can't go from virtual zero to big corporate grants in an instant. Step-by-step...
We could also have other types of fund raisers, from soliciting local businesses, apply for various grants from the government, online auctions of surplus (which personally I despise the idea of doing, I'd rather keep the surplus as property of the federation, if we want something to do with something we have 10 or more of, maybe have classes on working on them, that way we have units for spares/parts/etc)
As I mentioned earlier, we're taking time to learn the IRS rules for de-accessioning. I am pretty sure we cannot just "sell" stuff in the normal fashion. Corey's doing the research.
So, we don't have to "live" like we only have enough to rub 2 sticks together (or sit behind some big iron) to keep warm, that's why this internal only fundraiser for the stools confused the living hell out of me.
Again for the record, the big fundraiser was hardly just for places to sit down. :) It was mostly for display furniture (all the non-big iron artifacts have to live somewhere, we can't keep using plastic folding tables and ugly Army surplus desks like in the current four museum rooms); for having more electrical power installed; converting the new room's single door into a double door; and so on.
I've talked to Evan about a few "BIG" idea for the future to bring up to the board, dunno if he did or not
Of course.
with a few good grants or corporate investments from some companies that we may be able to reel in, we could make this a lot more fun, as well as a lot more popular.
We (the board) completely agree. We ask for your patience; these things take time. :)