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Endowment

 

Endowment

Your support of the endowment is the most important way to make a lasting impact on the Phillips. Gifts at all levels are welcome. The Phillips Collection provides a wide variety of naming opportunities that include gallery spaces and other facilities, positions, and programs. Phillips staff members will be delighted to talk with you about opportunities that meet your interests as well as the priorities of the museum.

Endowment Comparison

More than many other museums, the Phillips is challenged by its lack of a significant endowment.

The $34 million endowment is only three times the size of the Phillips's annual budget and provides about 16 percent of its annual support. Comparable museums typically have endowments of $150 million or more, which are 9 to 11 times the size of their annual budgets and provide about a third of their annual support. Without that guaranteed revenue stream, the Phillips is more vulnerable to economic fluctuations and varying attendance at exhibitions. As a Washington-based museum, it must also compete with government-funded, admission-free museums for public attention.

What this museum produces, with a very small staff, demonstrates how carefully it manages its limited resources. But while the Phillips performs at exceptionally high levels, it does so with dangerously narrow margins.  

The museum's short-term goal is to grow the endowment to $50 million in the next couple of years-and then, eventually, to $100 million. An enhanced endowment will enable the museum to plan ahead with assurance, take advantage of extraordinary opportunities, continue the excellence for which it is known, and provide a cushion to weather economic downturns and global uncertainties.

For more information, please contact:

Allison Chance, Director of Individual Giving
achance@phillipscollection.org
202-387-2151 x314