Amy Surdam: Hard Times For Voluntary Fundraising

The president of the Children's Museum of Cheyenne Board of Directors says the struggling state economy is making it hard to raise money for non-profit groups.

Amy Surdam says her organization had originally hoped to raise the roughly $21 million to build the museum through private fundraising . She says the organization has raised about $3 million through a variety of efforts.

But she adds fundraisers are dealing with a  "very different Wyoming" than was the case three years ago when the effort to build the museum started. Surdam says the large donors in the energy industry that museum supporters had hoped to get money from are no longer in a position to give money.

Because of that she says the organization is now considering asking voters to help fund the construction of the museum, either through a proposal on the sixth-penny sales tax ballot, or possibly by approving a rarely-used quarter penny tax as a seventh penny ballot option.

She says the biggest problem with getting on the sixth-penny election ballot at this point is that ''we are a little late in the game" compared to some of the other projects that are likely to ask for funding.

Surdam says the other option is the  seventh penny economic development tax, which would take 1/4 of a penny from every dollar of sales tax revenues, or a penny from every four dollars. Surdam says so far Goshen County is the only county in the state that has ever implemented the seventh penny tax, but adds it is potentially "a tool in our toolbox" as far as raising money for the museum.

She says the museum board paid for a survey of local voters by a national polling company that found 57 percent of those surveyed said they would vote for the seventh penny tax for the museum. She says the same survey found 70 percent support funding the museum through the sixth penny tax.

The museum group is working to build the facility in the downtown Cheyenne property commonly known as "the hole."