Hi All,

Are there any railway museums either partially or fully funded with an endowment?

Thanks
Robby Peartree

The Western Railway Museum has an endowment of about $3.9 milliion, thanks largely to a bequest from the late Loring Jensen. We estimate that about 30% of our operating budget will be provided by endowment earnings this fiscal year.

Al Stangenberger
Treasurer

I am only familiar with the traction side of things.

The ones that come to mind are the Seashore Trolley Museum in Maine, the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum and the Western Railway Museum.

These days all it takes is a member or two leaving his home to the museum to the endowment Fund and you are starting to have some serious money in the account.

Remember that the gift of any amount to the museum endowment is a gift that keeps on giving!

Ted Miles

Orange Empire has three endowment funds that currently total about $637,000. These have been funded by specified bequests, interested living members, challenged grants by living members, and Board allocation of unspecified bequests.

One of the funds is limited to maintenance of railway equipment; the one is limited to building maintenance; and the third is for general purposes of the Museum.

The investment and management of these funds is handled by an Endowment Committee of which the majority is non-Board and non-officer members of the Museum. Its operation is established by an endowment policy. This last year the earnings of several of the funds were in excess of the maximum percent that can be disbursed per year; this excess by policy was rolled back into the principle for additional earnings.

As Ted Mills stated, it can take just a member leaving his house to the Museum to provide a significant addition. One of our recent deceased members left 75% of his estate to his church and 25% to OERM; these were his two families as he was single without family. The Board voted to place the Museum's six-figure amount into one of the endowments

This is something that I have been thinking a great deal about lately. Our local community foundation makes it easy to start an endowment fund, $5,000 will get it started and they will manage it based upon your investment objectives. Every organization that purports to preserve stuff over the long term needs an endowment of some sort, and more importantly needs qualified people to maintain and grow it and not frivilously spend the money.

So far this thread has mostly mentioned museums with traction equipment (OERM has both).

how about the steam (mainline) museums that are not government sponsored. I am not talking about the California State Railroad Museum or the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.

Does the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum, the Colorado Railroad Museum, the Illinois Railway Museum have endowment programs?

And just for general information, i believe that colleges and universities have the largest endowments in the US.

ted Miles

Is OERM's endowment completely controlled by its endowment committee or is there a communities foundation that is responsible for administration? Who makes the actual investment decisions? It sounds very successful and I'd be interested to see how the committee is structured and what the policies are as a benchmark for the rest of us.

Ben Kroger
Dallas, Texas

IRM does have an endowment fund. It was started by a very generous seed donation, and any amount donated and so specified is added to the principal balance.

So far we have chosen NOT to pull any earnings from the fund, preferring to let the interest compound and grow. The capital balance is modest right now, but hopefully more donations can be attracted to this important fund.

Bob Kutella

We have an endowment fund at National Capital Trolley Museum. It has been in existence for about 20 years and recently received a generous gift that moved us into six figures.

We have drawn on the fund twice to self fund a reprint of Roy King's "100 Years of Capital Traction", and Peter Kohler's Capital Transit book. In both cases the proceeds from the sales were re-invested in the fund after the loan was paid back, thereby increasing the balance. The book projects have provided good returns.

Wesley

The Railroaders Memorial Museum has 2 modest endowments managed by the Central Pennsylvania Community Foundation. One was started by a former Board President's "seed gift" and the other by the donor who covered the engiineering costs of our roundhouse/turntable project. Now that they have been established, anyone can add to the balances with a gift of any amount whether it be a gift of cash or in the case of the gift that established the second endowment, appreciated stock.

The first fund was set up to assist in the general operating costs of the Museum and the second was set up with the interest dedicated to the ongoing maintenance costs of the roundhouse and K4.

Anyone wishing to add to the balance of either endowment fund can contact the Railroaders Memorial Museum.

HI Al,

by my calculations that means WRM's budget is over $650,000. Does that include capital expenses as well?

Our endowment policy requires that for the initial year only about 1.7% can be released from any new endowment. THe second year 3.4% can be released from accumulated earnings and 5% in years thereafter. This has worked very well for us.

One mistake we made at the outset was to establish our minimum initial contribution to start an endowment too low. We have raised it and are currently at $10,000 to initiate a named endowment and will likely revisit that amount in the coming year.

We have enlisted the services of a financial manager which is within the requirements of our endowments policy. He is a private investments planner. We recently changed, but before we did, we had the respective managers present their strategies to the endowment committee for evaluation. contact me through this board and I will email you our documents.

I would like to thank everybody for their time in responding. I hope to promote the idea of establishing endowment type support to a couple of rail preservation efforts for particular parts of their efforts. I believe that as the effects of time continue to occur we will need to look at new ways of supporting our efforts particularly as new generations have their time to lead the world and follow their passions.

I often find that the answers to obstacles are where you least expect them. I have been privileged to see the writings of Cornelius W. Hauck on the management of the funds for the Colorado Railroad museum and see his success at making the R&LHS financially stabile for so many years. In their time they managed a commercial property (Iron Horse Motel) quite effectively that has benefited the Colorado museum quite effectively.

I want to take the C&TS as an example. In today’s dollars, the projected cost for a single locomotive rebuild is in the neighborhood of $1.2 million per year per locomotive. I believe that the size of an endowment to be able to fund at this level needs to be in the $200 million just for locomotive costs alone. While such a figure would be staggering to reach one has to start somewhere. It is interesting is that a number of museums do indeed have some form of endowment programs for sustaining long term efforts. Most of the organizations that I have seen are focused on a raise it today, spend it today budgetary plan.

Are there any thoughts on the organizational development to reach the level of endowment development and management? Was it special individuals leading the way or was it more of a group consensus? And what potential problems can one expect in setting up such of a program?

Again thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Robby Peartree

In our case at National Capital, our endowment started as a small savings account reserve to cover our liability insurance deductible. Then John Novack started pushing the idea that we needed to "pay ourselves" first, and we started adding to the reserve with memorial gifts and other donations. Finally, a major gift gave the endwoment some weight.

As of the moment we have not used the fund to support operations or any special projects. In many respects it remains a reserve. A strategic planner worked with us five years ago on a study that showed the average streetcar restoration was valued at about $200,000 and takes five years. At that rate she said we needed to find a funding stream of $40,000 annually just to keep up with our potential projects. And that does not provide support for routine operating costs for the Museum programs.

We have been promoting planned giving with our membership and invited an attorney to make a presentation with the hope of attracting some future bequests and gifts.

All of which takes time and patience.

Wesley