Fundraising, education efforts focus of Marshals Museum meeting

The potentially slow progress of fundraising for the U.S. Marshals Museum and the expansion of school programs coordinated by museum staff were key items discussed Tuesday (Mar. 9) during a quarterly museum board meeting.

Jessica Hayes, director of operations for the U.S. Marshals Museum, showed board members a kit the museum developed to help public school teachers incorporate U.S. Marshals Service history into the classroom. A grant for the Arkansas Humanities Council provided funding for the project which has included 67 teachers in 35 public schools and six universities. The kits include documents copied from National Archives, press reports, presidential letters and other materials that explain several historic periods in the U.S. Marshals Service history.

Hayes said some of the kits are used by more than one teacher at a school, “which increases the impact we are having” in educating students about the U.S. Marshals Service. A grant from the Library of Congress is being sought that would allow Hayes and the museum staff to coordinate and deliver kits to at least 200 more teachers.

The museum staff is working with the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith to conduct a national academic conference centered upon the role of the U.S. Marshals Service in the civil rights movement. The conference will include a nationwide solicitation of academic research — “call for papers” — on the movement. The process also will include public events possibly featuring people who experienced first-hand key civil rights events, Hayes said.

Another upcoming museum program is an annual safety fair that exposes children and parents to home and personal safety issues — electronic fingerprinting, for example. The May 7 event will be held 3 to 6 p.m., at the Riverfront Amphitheater in downtown Fort Smith, and will include a Trout Fishing in America concert at 6:30 p.m.

With the safety fair tied to support for the Community Clearinghouse, admission is free but donations of canned or packaged foods are encouraged.

And yet another project on Hayes’ plate is an attempt to connect with all U.S. Presidential Libraries for a year of programs in 2014 — the 225th anniversary of the U.S. Marshals Service. Hayes is hoping to gain a planning grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop a plan that would coordinate programs with the presidential libraries focused on the role of the U.S. Marshals during the period of the respective president. The museum and libraries would work with local universities to create the education programs and to create Web-based programs, Hayes explained.

FUNDRAISING FRONT
Barbara Harvel, director of development for the museum, said the staff has been busy following the Dec. 18 reception in Little Rock during which former President Bill Clinton and Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe served as hosts.

In addition to making phone calls and developing marketing materials, Harvel said a detailed letter explaining the museum effort was sent in January to the potential Marshals Museum donors who attended the Little Rock reception.

In January 2007, the U.S. Marshals Service selected Fort Smith as the site for the national museum. To fund the effort to get the museum built, the project received $100,000 from the city of Fort Smith, $115,000 from Sebastian County, $200,000 from the state Legislature and $2 million from Gov. Mike Beebe. But the cost to build the 50,000-square-foot museum — including exhibit work — is estimated at around $50 million.

Harvel said Russ Hodge, with Dublin, Ohio-based The Hodge Group, is in Fort Smith every other week for about a day and a half to help with fundraising strategies. Hodge was involved in fundraising efforts with the University of Arkansas, Bentonville Public Library and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

Jim Dunn, executive director of the U.S. Marshals Museum, said the first few meetings made to solicit funds indicate that the fundraising process won’t be easy. He said the visits have been positive, but when sponsorship opportunities ranging between $250,000 and $3 million were mentioned, the “tone of the conversation changed a little.” He said the trick will be for Hodge and the museum staff to begin “peeling back the layers of the onion” to reach the decision makers at the corporations on the potential donor list.

“This is another way of telling you … that this will be a time-consuming effort on our part,” Dunn told the board. “Don’t expect immediate results.”

Hodge said in July 2009 that the fundraising process could take up to 7 years.