I'm probably not the only person here who has pondered the question of what to do with a nice canoe after I am too old to use or enjoy it. I am fortunate to have one or two that may be unusual enough to consider donating to a museum. Most museums seem to need money more than additional display items so I feel that a reasonable donor should also be willing to provide sufficient funds to pay for some of the overhead related to the items being donated. I understand the complexity of calculating a precise answer to the exact overhead related to a canoe but a rough number could be obtained by simply taking the total annual expenses of the organization and dividing by the total number of boats in a marine museum. I have posed this question to a few museum people but have never gotten a detailed answer. This appears to be a very sensitive issue.
The Canadian Canoe Museum (CCM) is planning to build a wonderful new facility which has provided some insight into the scale of the costs involved. The article at https://kawarthanow.com/2021/04/29/...this-fall-with-projected-summer-2023-opening/ indicates that "the total project cost remains in the range of $35 to $40 million." The page at https://canoemuseum.ca/the-exhibits/ mentions "open storage space, featuring more than 500 full-sized watercraft." This works out to $70K to $80K per canoe to build the facility. It is clearly possible to build a less expensive building but this provides some indication of the magnitude necessary to really do it right.
The building is only part of the equation. Staff, facilities, administrative, fundraising, and other ongoing expenses need to be considered. The CCM's most recent annual report is available at https://canoemuseum.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CCM-Annual-Report-2020_web.pdf and page 10 indicates that these expenses totaled $1,159,253 in 2020. This is $2,319 per year for each of the 500 canoes that they plan to move to the new building.
Therefore, the bottom line is that a reasonable donor should think about donating roughly $100,000 to a world class museum to cover the total cost of a building and ten years of maintenance for a donated canoe. The other obvious options are to simply sell it to another collector or leave it to your heirs and let them decide what to do with it. I am still pondering.
Benson
The Canadian Canoe Museum (CCM) is planning to build a wonderful new facility which has provided some insight into the scale of the costs involved. The article at https://kawarthanow.com/2021/04/29/...this-fall-with-projected-summer-2023-opening/ indicates that "the total project cost remains in the range of $35 to $40 million." The page at https://canoemuseum.ca/the-exhibits/ mentions "open storage space, featuring more than 500 full-sized watercraft." This works out to $70K to $80K per canoe to build the facility. It is clearly possible to build a less expensive building but this provides some indication of the magnitude necessary to really do it right.
The building is only part of the equation. Staff, facilities, administrative, fundraising, and other ongoing expenses need to be considered. The CCM's most recent annual report is available at https://canoemuseum.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CCM-Annual-Report-2020_web.pdf and page 10 indicates that these expenses totaled $1,159,253 in 2020. This is $2,319 per year for each of the 500 canoes that they plan to move to the new building.
Therefore, the bottom line is that a reasonable donor should think about donating roughly $100,000 to a world class museum to cover the total cost of a building and ten years of maintenance for a donated canoe. The other obvious options are to simply sell it to another collector or leave it to your heirs and let them decide what to do with it. I am still pondering.
Benson
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