Met yesterday with Margo Wolanin, the development officer for the Ohio State College of Humanities. I sketched out my idea for The Military History Foundation (henceforth MHF) and briefly outlined the circumstances that made it necessary.
I intended our meeting to be just an information interview in which I would avail myself of her expertise in the art of development, but to my surprise she almost instantly suggested that the university could help the MHF project get off the ground, provided an angle could be found that legitimately benefitted the university as well.
For instance, let’s say that we decided to convene a conference for military historians interested in learning the ropes of identifying and cultivating donors, etc. Ohio State routinely provides funds for scholarly meetings, in part because such meetings enhance the visibility and status of the university. If an argument could be made and sustained that support for an MHF conference would showcase Ohio State’s leadership in the field of military history, that might constitute a legitimate case for the university’s involvement.
I’m less interested in the university’s money per se than I am in the advantages of simply being able to do the initial MHF work under the auspices of Ohio State. It would relieve us of the immediate need to incorporate MHF as a nonprofit organization; we would be able to make use of the university’s existing legal and accounting oversight mechanisms; we could, within reason, draw upon the expertise of the university’s development officers — and believe me, they are very good at their jobs.
But in terms of seed money, I think as far as possible military historians and those interested in the field should pony up the money ourselves. In the long run, we’re going to need to bag a big elephant — actually a number of big elephants — by which I mean benefactors able to make large donations. But in the short run, we need to learn how to bag an elephant, and that mostly requires an investment of time, not money.
