The WP 165 Blog caught my eye in that they have a great graphic showing the tubesheet being filled with superheater units at $350 each and a way to donate.

http://wprrsteam.blogspot.com/

I think this is a great tool and could be the basis of a much more advanced online donation system. Maybe a 3-D rendering of the whole locomotive with clickable parts that could be sponsored.

The W&W in Delaware did a "Buy-a-Tie" program years back that was successful. I'm curious if other organizations have tried to break down a big project into smaller portions and what level of success they have had.

Talk about a "big project" the SS United States group has individual areas you can sponsor.

Joshua

Josh,

I learned about 30 years ago that ships are just too hard. We lost two great Wilmington built ships in the 80's and I've seen dozens of others go since then. I've concluded that ships are about 1,000 times tougher than trains.

Tom,

At NCTM we have usually done financial campaigns by "levels": Switchman $500, Conductor $1000, etc. This has been successful with a fairly predictable level of return. At church I have been able to use the "buy a (blank)" approach. We did a campaign to restore stained glass windows at $2000 per window and a replacement church organ by selling keyboard keys at some dollar amount I do not recall.

What made these buy a (blank) campaigns successful was having an affordable price for the item needed that reached an attainable total goal. In other words were were confident going into the campaign that we could raise the total amount, and the sale of keys/windows was a method to collect the funds. In the case of the church organ the goal was $125,000. We could not have sold keys as effectively if the campaign goal was much higher than that since the money was just not there to raise.

Wesley

BTW - what were the two Wilmington boats lost? I can think of State of Pennsylvania as one of them.