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Among other outcomes, strategic planning would help define the goals and objectives which would form the basis for a "case statement" for an Institution-wide development campaign. Furthermore, strategic planning would encourage the use of marketing techniques which would activate the intersections between prospective donors' needs, interests and desires, on one hand, with a strong organizational statement of the Smithsonian's mission and programs, on the other. The role of the Federal appropriation should be totally integrated into these considerations.

The strategic planning process must be inclusive in nature, allowing for the compilation and distillation of "wish lists," determining the optimal administrative structure for actually pursuing funds, i.e., centrally or through a decentralized organization, identifying budgetary supports for items deemed necessary but of low "fundability," and so forth. 

Based on current experiences and needs, some objectives of a pan-Institutional development effort might be:

○ a National Air and Space Museum Extension
○ an African-American Museum
○ an Endowed Fund for Scholarly Research (to include curatorial chairs, fellowships, research start-up, career development, sponsorship of seminars, conferences and symposia, and interdisciplinary research initiatives)
○ an Endowed Fund for Research Instrumentation
○ an Endowed Fund for Collections Acquisitions
○ an Endowed Fund for Technological Innovation (to provide partial support for a proposed Smithsonian Media Center and to upgrade the Institution's computing capacity)
○ a Fund for International Collaboraion
○ an Endowed Secretary's Discretionary Fund

In most colleges and universities, strategic planning is undertaken in connection with periodic reviews for accreditation and in the design of institutional plans that help define and set fund-raising priorities. The same type of exercise must be undertaken at the Smithsonian to determine more fully, when the time comes, whether a campaign is warranted and whether one could be successful.

The Institution currently is in a "tri-fold" situation resulting from the following: 

○ Implementation of the OMD [[underlined]] Operating Plan [[/underlined]] to strengthen the fund-raising apparatus
○ Expansion and sophistication of strategic planning
○ Initiation of two major undertakings which will both test and teach the staff regarding its ability to undertake large-scale, pan-Institutional fund raising, namely, in connection with support for the Quincentenary celebration of the Columbus voyage, and in securing public and private support of the National Museum of the American Indian.

The staff approaches these tasks concurrently with the expectation that the planned constituency development activities, the projected increases in