9-11 Memorial Fundraising Drive
9-11 memorial fundraising drive seeks big cash and small change
BY DOUGLAS FEIDENNew York Daily News
NEW YORK - (KRT) - Reach for your wallets and tell your kids to crack open their piggy banks: The $500 million campaign to build a world-class memorial at ground zero has begun.
Students and stockbrokers, firefighters and financiers, baseball fans and business barons will all be asked to pony up in one of the greatest fundraising challenges in New York City history.
The goal: during the next four years, raise $300 million from corporations and fat-cat donors and $200 million from the general public for the World Trade Center memorial and museum.
By reaching out to working people as well as the megarich, organizers are mounting a grassroots appeal that hasn't been seen since 1885 - when city schoolchildren gave their nickels and dimes to pay for the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty.
"The task is to tap into that classic, uniquely American vein of generosity to tell the story of 9-11 - the story of those who died, those who helped and those who cared," said Gretchen Dykstra, president of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation.
Moneymaking plans include an effort to get the biggest Wall Street companies to donate a portion of their trading profits on Sept. 11, 2006, the five-year commemoration of the attacks, the New York Daily News has learned.
"We want to honor, remember and respect all the innocent people we lost, and we need to be directly involved in the memorial," said Marc Lackritz, president of the Securities Industry Association, whose member companies lost 749 employees on Sept. 11. "It's under discussion."
A possible marketing partnership with Major League Baseball also is being explored, insiders say.
Pegged to the World Series, it would get the foundation's Web site _www.wtcmemorialfoundation.org - splashed across national television and build on a $1 million gift that MLB and the Baseball Players Association gave the memorial last year.
The National Football League and other professional sports leagues also have held preliminary talks about promotional alliances.
"Fundraising opportunities are endless at sporting events," said NYC & Co. Chairman Jonathan Tisch, who is raising cash for the memorial. He ought to know - his family owns 50 percent of the New York Giants.
"I don't know if we'd pass the hat, but revenues could be derived on everything from receptacles for loose change to sales at vending stands," Tisch added.
The street-corner bell-ringers of the Salvation Army also will be asked to solicit funds on future anniversaries of Sept. 11, according to one initiative.
And the proud Internet geeks at EchoDitto Inc., who ran Howard Dean's hugely successful online fundraising campaign in 2004, will be Web masters for the memorial. Planners hope to collect $100 million in cyberspace, based on an average gift of $100 from a projected 1 million donors.
"The Dean campaign showed that citizens could organize and raise significant small-dollar contributions online," said Nicco Mele, chief executive of EchoDitto.
"But the online response to the tsunami - $1 billion in 30 days - showed how the Internet can spur enormous charitable giving globally, and that's the model for the memorial."
In addition, dozens of potentially lucrative marketing tie-ins are being sought - with NASCAR, the Country Music Association Awards, unions in both the public and private sector, and the 165,000 volunteer firefighters in New York, organizers say.
Also on the wish list: the sale of Lance Armstrong-style bracelets - forget-me-nots that would be funded by Avon or its foundation - with proceeds donated to the memorial.
"Some 500,000 people volunteered their time after 9-11, and they all made America proud," Dykstra said. "The challenge now is how to tap into that spirit."
At stake is Reflecting Absence, the World Trade Center Memorial to the nearly 3,000 slaughtered innocents that will be the heart and soul of ground zero, and the Memorial Museum, which will show 9-11 artifacts and relate the horrors of that day. Both are expected to open in 2009.
Located in a forest of soaring oak trees, the memorial's centerpiece will be two voids ringed by a curtain of water that cascades into reflecting pools below. It includes a tomb for unidentified remains, a contemplation room for family members and a Memorial Gallery lined with the names of the dead.
The 6-acre "memorial quadrant" also will include a 110,000-square-foot, 70-foot-high subterranean museum between the footprints of the twin towers, providing access to both the bedrock and the original slurry wall.
The memorial complex, along with the more controversial cultural facilities, the International Freedom Center and the Drawing Center, yards away on ground zero, are expected to cost $800 million.
New York Gov. George Pataki has directed $300 million in federal funds to the memorial project, which leaves a half-billion dollars in private funds still to be raised.
Meanwhile, a bill sponsored by Rep. Vito Fossella, R-N.Y., would let federal taxpayers donate $1 to the memorial by checking a box on their income taxes. If it becomes law, and if a mere 20 percent of 120 million tax filers gave a buck a year, it would generate a $24 million annual windfall.
"It's an opportunity for the American people to step up to the plate and get directly involved in the future of Ground Zero," Fossella said.
A similar measure pushed by Pataki would create a memorial checkoff box on New York state tax returns.
---
BY DOUGLAS FEIDENNew York Daily News
NEW YORK - (KRT) - Reach for your wallets and tell your kids to crack open their piggy banks: The $500 million campaign to build a world-class memorial at ground zero has begun.
Students and stockbrokers, firefighters and financiers, baseball fans and business barons will all be asked to pony up in one of the greatest fundraising challenges in New York City history.
The goal: during the next four years, raise $300 million from corporations and fat-cat donors and $200 million from the general public for the World Trade Center memorial and museum.
By reaching out to working people as well as the megarich, organizers are mounting a grassroots appeal that hasn't been seen since 1885 - when city schoolchildren gave their nickels and dimes to pay for the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty.
"The task is to tap into that classic, uniquely American vein of generosity to tell the story of 9-11 - the story of those who died, those who helped and those who cared," said Gretchen Dykstra, president of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation.
Moneymaking plans include an effort to get the biggest Wall Street companies to donate a portion of their trading profits on Sept. 11, 2006, the five-year commemoration of the attacks, the New York Daily News has learned.
"We want to honor, remember and respect all the innocent people we lost, and we need to be directly involved in the memorial," said Marc Lackritz, president of the Securities Industry Association, whose member companies lost 749 employees on Sept. 11. "It's under discussion."
A possible marketing partnership with Major League Baseball also is being explored, insiders say.
Pegged to the World Series, it would get the foundation's Web site _www.wtcmemorialfoundation.org - splashed across national television and build on a $1 million gift that MLB and the Baseball Players Association gave the memorial last year.
The National Football League and other professional sports leagues also have held preliminary talks about promotional alliances.
"Fundraising opportunities are endless at sporting events," said NYC & Co. Chairman Jonathan Tisch, who is raising cash for the memorial. He ought to know - his family owns 50 percent of the New York Giants.
"I don't know if we'd pass the hat, but revenues could be derived on everything from receptacles for loose change to sales at vending stands," Tisch added.
The street-corner bell-ringers of the Salvation Army also will be asked to solicit funds on future anniversaries of Sept. 11, according to one initiative.
And the proud Internet geeks at EchoDitto Inc., who ran Howard Dean's hugely successful online fundraising campaign in 2004, will be Web masters for the memorial. Planners hope to collect $100 million in cyberspace, based on an average gift of $100 from a projected 1 million donors.
"The Dean campaign showed that citizens could organize and raise significant small-dollar contributions online," said Nicco Mele, chief executive of EchoDitto.
"But the online response to the tsunami - $1 billion in 30 days - showed how the Internet can spur enormous charitable giving globally, and that's the model for the memorial."
In addition, dozens of potentially lucrative marketing tie-ins are being sought - with NASCAR, the Country Music Association Awards, unions in both the public and private sector, and the 165,000 volunteer firefighters in New York, organizers say.
Also on the wish list: the sale of Lance Armstrong-style bracelets - forget-me-nots that would be funded by Avon or its foundation - with proceeds donated to the memorial.
"Some 500,000 people volunteered their time after 9-11, and they all made America proud," Dykstra said. "The challenge now is how to tap into that spirit."
At stake is Reflecting Absence, the World Trade Center Memorial to the nearly 3,000 slaughtered innocents that will be the heart and soul of ground zero, and the Memorial Museum, which will show 9-11 artifacts and relate the horrors of that day. Both are expected to open in 2009.
Located in a forest of soaring oak trees, the memorial's centerpiece will be two voids ringed by a curtain of water that cascades into reflecting pools below. It includes a tomb for unidentified remains, a contemplation room for family members and a Memorial Gallery lined with the names of the dead.
The 6-acre "memorial quadrant" also will include a 110,000-square-foot, 70-foot-high subterranean museum between the footprints of the twin towers, providing access to both the bedrock and the original slurry wall.
The memorial complex, along with the more controversial cultural facilities, the International Freedom Center and the Drawing Center, yards away on ground zero, are expected to cost $800 million.
New York Gov. George Pataki has directed $300 million in federal funds to the memorial project, which leaves a half-billion dollars in private funds still to be raised.
Meanwhile, a bill sponsored by Rep. Vito Fossella, R-N.Y., would let federal taxpayers donate $1 to the memorial by checking a box on their income taxes. If it becomes law, and if a mere 20 percent of 120 million tax filers gave a buck a year, it would generate a $24 million annual windfall.
"It's an opportunity for the American people to step up to the plate and get directly involved in the future of Ground Zero," Fossella said.
A similar measure pushed by Pataki would create a memorial checkoff box on New York state tax returns.
---
posted by "Faces of the Brave" at 6:46 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home