Seattle Veteran’s Museum

Wish / Need List

Remember, we are a 501c3 non-profit organization and all donations are tax-deductible.

Ø NEW BUILDING OR PROPERTY – WE ARE LOOKING FOR A GREAT AMERICAN PATRIOT TO HELP FIND THE NEXT HOME FOR OUR MUSEUM. Currently, we are renting a small space in downtown Seattle in the Benaroya Hall. Our museum is only about 600 square feet. We could easily fill a space 10 times that size and the donations continue to come in. If you have a building that you would like to see as the future home of the most important museum in Seattle, please consider donating it to SVM. Seattle has many magnificent museums. We think the veterans that have earned our freedom and sacrificed their lives for our County deserve a museum larger and more spectacular than any other. It is very tough for our museum to move forward when we are paying downtown Seattle rent rates. If you have a building or vacant property, please consider it for a tax-deductible donation to our museum as a future museum site.

Ø BOARD MEMBERS – We are looking for DEDICATED members for our Board of Directors that can demonstrate a passion to honor our veterans and move our museum forward. Candidates should be willing to devote 5, or more, hours a week to our museum efforts, and ALL board members should spend a portion of their time on fundraising. This is not the “fun” part of the project, but it is the most necessary. If you have some nonprofit or management experience and are ready to devote yourself to our museum, and feel the pride and fulfillment that will come with it, we would love to hear from you.

Ø VOLUNTEERS – We are always looking for more volunteers. You can tailor you job to whatever YOU want to do. Some volunteers take turns manning the front desk at the museum on Fridays and Saturdays while other volunteers work on their own “projects” that can range from restoring antiques, printing fliers, building mannequins, cleaning the museum, fundraising, to working at the information booths we set up at local public and private events.

Ø OUR FIRST PAID EMPLOYEE – Our museum has always operated on volunteers only, but we have decided it is time to hire our first employee to provide a constant force to keep our museum moving forward. This person will work down at the museum on Thursdays, from 10am to 5pm, and will run the front desk like all the other volunteers. However, when there are no visitors in the museum, our employee will concentrate all efforts on fundraising. The three primary skills this employee must have are significant fundraising experience, people skills to give tours of the museum, and a devotion to our veterans. The applicant should have some knowledge of US history, but does not have to be an avid military historian. We will train them on any specific historical information.

The fundraising work will include not only mailing out letters to past and potential members and sponsors, but preferably knowing how to research for new sponsors, follow up with potential sponsors, building relationships with sponsors, fill out foundation applications for funding, etc. (We will provide initial training on filling out foundation application forms, and I will share what we know about fundraising techniques we have learned, but we hope the employee will have some ideas of their own.) Basic computer skills needed will be Microsoft WORD, EXCEL and Internet.

Our hope is that with this employee working primarily on fundraising, they will soon pay for themselves and more.

If this step proves successful we will add more hours for this employee, but for starting out, it will be for just one day per week. The pay will be $11/hour to start out. There are no "benefits" that go with this job, (other than the glow you feel inside as you go out of your way to honor our veterans.)

If you, or someone you know, might be interested in this position, please get in contact with me for more details.

Our museum is such an important institution for our community. Our veterans have risked everything for our Freedom, and some have given up everything!!!! THERE IS NO MUSEUM IN SEATTLE THAT HAS A MISSION MORE IMPORTANT THAN OURS! And this is your chance to be a part of our team. If you are a proud, Red-White-and-Blue American that loves your freedom and your veterans, this job can be right for you.

Ø MEMBERS, SPONSORS AND MONETARY DONATIONS – If you love your freedom and your veterans, and you support our efforts to honor our veterans and teach all our citizens about the price that others have paid for our freedom, please consider purchasing a membership, sponsorship or making a monetary donation. We NEED financial support to carry on.

Ø ADVERTISING – If you can provide free advertising on your radio station, TV station, billboard, magazine, newspaper, newsletter, side of your truck, or bumper of your car, please contact us. We do not have the cash flow to pay for expensive advertising, so we are looking for places that we can tell our story or put up signs.

If you have a lobby or business where we can put a stack of our fliers, please let us know and one of our volunteers will stop by with some.

Ø TAX PREPARATION and LEGAL SERVICES – Our board of directors have always filed all tax papers, registration with the state, grant applications, and other business/tax paperwork. We would love to have a tax/legal expert that can assist us with these chores and advise us on future decisions as our museum grows. We hope to soon hire our first employee to concentrate on fundraising. There will be many new tax forms to deal with that we are not familiar with (yet). If you are a lawyer, CPA, etc., we could use your help.

Ø PRINTING SERVICES – We are always printing fliers and brochures for our museum on our own printers (one at a time) to save money. If you can provide printing services to take care of some of these for us that would save us time and printer cartridges. We have lots of nice quality cards that have been donated, so we just need someone to print them up. Remember, we are a 501c3 nonprofit, and any services that you provide can be tax-deductible.

Ø PRINTER CARTRIDGES – We have a HP printer that uses a color cartridge #78 and black cartridge #15. We also have an old printer that uses cartridge # xxxxx.

Ø LAMINATING MACHINE – If you have a “heat”-laminating laminating machine that still works well, it would be very handy to have in our museum. We can use it to make volunteer name tags, signs, and to laminate some of our display signs. We cannot afford high quality signs on our museum antique displays, so we just print them on paper and laminate them with the “sticky” laminating sheets. We NEVER laminate any of our antique documents or paper items as this will eventually degrade the paper. Laminating is NOT a safe way to preserve antique paper items.

Ø PROFESSIONALLY MADE DISPLAY SIGNS – We would like to put more professional quality signs in our museum that describe the display articles and the veterans that wore them. We would also like to have professional quality signs in our front window to list our OPEN HOURS, PHONE NUMBER, VOLUNTEERS NEEDED, etc. If you would like to provide some nice looking signs for us, please give us a call. Remember, we are a 501c3 nonprofit, and any services that you provide can be tax-deductible.

Ø DISPLAY CABINET MATERIALS – Finish wood, 2x4s, 2x2s, etc, large sheets of plexi-glass (4’ x 6’, or 3’ x 6’)

We will soon begin building full display cases to house our artifacts. We will need nice quality interior finish pine or poplar to build these cases. We are hoping that a lumberyard, hardware store and plexi-glass supplier will donate some of the supplies for this project.

Ø MANNEQUINS – The mannequins we have on display are home made of 2x4s and Styrofoam. If you have some surplus store mannequins that are in fairly good shape, we could use them.

Ø LARGE BANNER – We would like to have a large banner to carry in parades and other events. We would like to have a cloth or plastic (rainproof and durable) banner with large foot-tall letters that says, “SeattleVeteransMuseum.org”

Ø COMPUTER – The computer we are now using is about 3 years old. GET INFO FROM ROBERT. If you have a new computer that works WELL and has no virus problems, please consider donating it.

Ø Dry CLEANING SERVICES – Occasionally we get uniforms donated that need to be cleaned properly and pressed before we can display them. If any dry cleaner would like to donate their tax-deductible services to our museum, we would appreciate it.

SPECIFIC MILITARY ANTIQUES WE ARE LACKING

We received a donation of 75 M1 steel helmet shells (shell only, without the liner, chin strap or cover). This is the style of helmet used from late WW2 to 1985.

· HELMENT LINERS – If you have any fiberglass helmet liners that go inside the steel shell, we can use a lot of them.

· CHINSTRAP – For the above helmets. Any chinstrap from WW2 -1985 can work.

· HELMET COVERS – For the helmets mentioned above. Any cloth helmet cover from WW2 to 1980s will work. (We do not have any cloth camo helmet cover from WW2, but these are very rare).

Ø BOOTS

· WW1 brown army ankle boots – These are very rare. All of our WW1 display is of authentic WW1 uniforms and artifacts EXCEPT for the boots. We would like to make our display all authentic items.

· WW2 brown army ankle boots, tall “2-buckle” boots. WW2 Marine Corp brown ankle boots. WW2 navy black ankle boots – Again, these are very rare. And again, all of our WW2 display is of authentic items EXCEPT the boots.

Ø Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Mexican-American War, Native American Wars and Civil War items. – Any artifacts from these time periods are extremely rare. We do have a display of authentic items from the Civil War and Rev War, but these items are very fragile and must be kept in a display case. For our mannequins, we must use high quality, historically accurate reproduction items. If any re-enactors out there have some left over gear that they are no longer using, please consider donating your historically accurate items to SVM. (Even if it is broken or torn, we can probably use it for display) We are in need of the following repro items:

· REV WAR – We would like ANY thing. Especially a cartridge box and strap, canteen and strap, haversack, bayonet and scabbard/strap, belt and buckle, personal items.

· CIVIL WAR – We would like ANY thing. Especially a holster, sword belt and buckle, kepi (hat), haversack, box plate, breastplate, personal items.

· WAR of 1812, MEX-AMER War, NATIVE AMERICAN WARS – We would like anything.