In Times of Scarcity, Building a Museum for Young ‘Max From Memphis’

In October 2003, Congress officially bestowed the title “National Children’s Museum” on a building that didn’t exist, on a concept that didn’t exist, and on an organization that hadn’t raised a penny.

Today, the National Children’s Museum is still at least two years away from breaking ground and four years away from opening. It has yet to decide when it will go public with a fund-raising campaign, and it is still building its board.

Unlike many of Washington’s museums, it will not be located on or near the National Mall. When its doors open, the museum will be located in this bedroom suburb just south of Washington, along the Potomac River, about six miles from the White House.

In these bad economic times, that may seem far-fetched. But the museum’s leader is optimistic, and the museum has gathered considerable momentum through an unusual fund-raising strategy.

One major reason is the author of that strategy, Steven Richard, the museum’s vice president of external relations and campaign director. The other major reason is a mythical young man whom Mr. Richard calls “Max from Memphis.”

Max is the centerpiece of Mr. Richard’s efforts to raise $182-million. According to Mr. Richard, who became the museum’s chief fund raiser last spring, Max will not just visit the museum when he and his family descend on the nation’s capital. Max will take his experience back to Memphis with him and stay welded to the museum for years to come — via the World Wide Web.

If Max is interested in, say, saving the environment, he will visit the museum’s environmental displays and then join organizations that share his convictions — in Memphis or anywhere in the world. He will receive e-mail alerts about the museum’s exhibits and programs that he can participate in online. He will be able to speak to children just like him via a MySpace or Facebook link. He will think of the museum as his stairway to the future.

That approach should attract solid corporate sponsorship early, Mr. Richard believes, because it will allow companies to get their logos in front of smart, caring young people. It will also allow the museum to develop consistent annual gifts from its truest believers — young people who have already visited the museum and their parents.

“We hope that the museum will act as a portal into its Web site and vice versa,” Mr. Richard says. “It will be the museum visit that never ends.”

The museum projects about 600,000 visitors a year. Yet for all its focus on the Maxes of Somewhere Out There, it expects about 75 percent of its visitors to live in the Washington metropolitan area.

Why would a national company want to underwrite a museum that will be so locally rooted?

Alan G. Hassenfeld, chairman of Hasbro and the head of the museum’s capital campaign, says it’s because the museum “will represent our nation’s hope for the future.” Mr. Richard adds that the museum will send a more political message to its young visitors.

“The museum will say, ‘It’s your world. Take care of it,’” Mr. Richard says.

To walk into the museum will be a stunning experience, if current plans hold. It will occupy 150,000 square feet over four stories. It will offer six “areas of engagement,” including the arts, health, and the environment. It will be set into the 300-acre campus of National Harbor, a new $2-billion mixed-use development that expects to hold dozens of major conventions each year. The museum hopes to answer the question, “What do the kids do while their parents are in meetings at National Harbor?”

Mr. Richard acknowledges that the word “national” in the museum’s title may present fund-raising problems.

Washington abounds with nonprofit organizations whose names contain that word and have found that it can inhibit donors. For example, Children’s National Medical Center is an independent nonprofit institution with no connection to federal Washington. Yet some of its prospects have been reluctant to give because they assume the hospital is supported by the federal government. The National Symphony Orchestra and Washington National Cathedral have faced similar problems.

Mr. Richard isn’t worried.

“We’ll be national in a meritocratic sense,” he says. “We haven’t experienced [anti-D.C. feeling] on a one-to-one level.” To contribute to the museum will be “an opportunity to be in Washington in a significant way,” he says. “It will be a platform that is unimpeachable. You’re not here as a lobbyist. You’re here as a supporter of an outstanding attraction.”

Besides, Mr. Richard notes, “we will be 500 feet from the Washington border. Our literature says we’re located in Washington, D.C. We are not trying to run away from Washington in any way.”

Mr. Richard says the museum expects to draw most of its visitors during nonrush hours, thus making it easier for those who drive to avoid Washington’s legendary traffic jams.

The museum also plans to make use of the Potomac River.

“We have access to a boat slip” just outside the main entrance, he says. “How cool would it be to arrive by sea, or to have a floating museum?”

Neither idea is solidly in the museum’s plans yet, but both are possibilities, Mr. Richard says.

Museums have traditionally offered naming opportunities to donors who give specific amounts, and the museum will be no exception.

“We hope that there will be ample opportunities for naming to occur, and for it to be more entertaining than obtrusive,” he says.

Does that mean there will be traditional nameplates above or beside exhibit cases? “They might be on the floor,” he replied. “They might be part of holograms. They might be on the Web site instead of in the museum itself.

“Corporate support is always a balancing act. But we have opportunities via our Web site to create branding opportunities that are real, yet don’t intrude.”

The museum has already taken the bold step of asking each member of its national board to be responsible for providing $1-million per year, either through personal gifts or donations raised from others, or a combination.

That figure “is high,” Mr. Richard acknowledges. “It is very high.” Yet interest in serving on the museum board is building, he said. “We hope to find a member or two from every major community around the country,” he says.

Raising money for a new organization can be a struggle in these tough times, when cultural organizations are trimming their operations and some are closing. But Mr. Richard says he is glad that the museum isn’t in the awkward situation of needing to raise money quickly to complete a project where building has already started.

Mr. Richard comes to the museum from a long background in the arts. A native of Beaumont, Tex., he aspired to be a playwright, but slid sideways into theater management “when I had an epiphany — I’d always be a struggling playwright.”

He was managing director of small theaters in Los Angeles and Pittsburgh before joining Washington’s Arena Stage as executive director in 1991. He spearheaded Arena’s current $125-million capital campaign (it has only about $17-million to go).

The National Children’s Museum “will certainly be fun for kids 12 and under,” Mr. Richard said. “We will be educational. We will do all of it.”

Then he pauses, wipes his glasses and sighs. “We won that Congressional designation,” he says. “Now, how do we earn it?”

Bob Levey is a regular columnist for The Chronicle. He spent 36 years as a columnist, reporter, and editor for The Washington Post. He has also been a senior fund-raising executive, and he is a longtime volunteer fund raiser in higher education and the arts. He teaches journalism at the University of Memphis.