Highlights Archives
Mead Witter Foundation Pledges $100,000 Toward Preservation Endowment
Mead Witter Foundation of Wisconsin Rapids has pledged $100,000 toward what ultimately will become a $2.5 million endowment for the preservation of the Wisconsin Historical Society's world-class North American history library and archival collections. The Wisconsin Historical Foundation will need to match Mead Witter's offer by Dec. 31, 2004, to receive the gift.
The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded the Wisconsin Historical Foundation a $500,000 challenge grant in May 2004. The Historical Foundation must match the NEH grant on a four-to-one basis, with $500,000 already raised, in order to meet the long-range $2.5 million goal. Mead Witter's pledge clears a major hurdle in the larger campaign to build the preservation endowment.
Mead Witter Foundation Chairman George Mead said that both the Foundation and the Mead family have been supporters of historic preservation and the Historical Society for many years. "One of the responsibilities at our Foundation is the preservation of historical records of the local paper industry. Our past and present support of the Society is a reflection of our general respect for the forces and events which brought us to where we are and the need to build on them for the future," Mead said.
"We are grateful to the Mead Witter Foundation for giving us such a wonderful tool to leverage still more support for the endowment. They're incredibly generous," said Melinda Heinritz, managing director of the Wisconsin Historical Foundation.
Once the $2.5 million goal is reached, the endowment will support a full-time senior conservator and provide annual funding for part-time staff, training, consultants to identify solutions to specific problems, and equipment for use in conserving the collection.
"The Mead Witter pledge is an important milestone in a fund-raising campaign that, when complete, will help provide the means to conserve one of the nation's most important North American history collections," said State Archivist Peter Gottlieb, who directs the Society's library and archives programs.
:: Posted August 17, 2004
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