The Pasto Agricultural Museum at Penn State
The Future —Our Legacy

We are here May 25, 2006. The future will be our legacy.
We are all friends and supporters of this gem of a museum — the Pasto Agricultural Museum at Penn State.
We have donated artifacts, served as advisory board members, served as tour guides and hosts or hostesses during Ag Progress Days, worked to conduct the silent auctions, donated to the silent auctions, cleaned the museum, served lunches at annual meetings and board meetings.
Today is a significant turning point in the history of this museum.
Today we have heard from
— our volunteer curator,
— committee chairs about well-planned future museum activities,
— elected new leaders,
— recognized a leader and hard worker
— heard the long range plans approved by the Advisory Board and Dean Steele,
— and learned of preliminary building plans for the museum.
Today we launch the fund drive to raise $500,000 to bring into existence this building planned for the museum and to build our financial support base — the Pasto Agricultural Museum Endowment.
We have a sixteen-member campaign committee; they will be making contacts — seeking donations:

The good news: we have $250,000 pledged to date.
We are at a great beginning — but the tough part is ahead of us. When I was asked to chair the fund drive — I was told it would be a short job — to be accomplished in one year to keep the project on the agreed upon timetable. So by next year at this time our mission is clear! Find $500,000!
I urge you to think positively about supporting this fund drive — yes, in a significant manner.
We are the core group of people who have already demonstrated our interest in and for the museum. Please take the initiative to contact a member of the Museum Enhancement Committee or Mark Sharer, Director of Development for the College of Agricultural Sciences.
If you contact us — you will be of great help — it will give us more time to contact possible donors not in attendance today. Thank you for helping us out.
As you think about your gift — keep in mind we are set up to take pledges — up to a five-year pledge — thus a $10,000 total could equal $2,000 per year times five years, a $5,000 total can be gifted over as many as five years and equal $1,000 per year in this example.
Regarding donor recognition — the Advisory Board has established a donor recognition program for all donations over $1,000.
Five categories have been set for:

As you contemplate a gift to this project keep in mind that preservation is a beautiful thing. We are passing on to future generations something that will live on after we are gone.
Think with me for a moment where we came from. I – and most of us — come from a background with no electrical lighting, no telephone, no cell phone, no blackberry, no e-mail, no indoor plumbing, no bathtub, no TV, a few radios.
We worked hard with muscle power on our family farms and in our homes.
We were instilled with a faith in the future by our families.
Today here we are — most of us at a stage in life where we are interested in giving back.
Really we are richer than we ever dreamed of — not a state of mind, but a reality.
The best part — we are for the most part now able to give back!
Here is an opportunity to recognize our heritage and to pass it on to future generations, and to pass on the fact that we appreciated our heritage and our background. We preserved it for them and future generations to see and learn from.
What better place to preserve this heritage than this museum at Penn State. A proud part of our heritage is the training and support for life that we garnered at this university.
Today — with our friends, we launch this campaign to move forward our Pasto Agricultural Museum. Here is our opportunity to do something that will live on after we are gone!
Let me reassure you and make a guarantee. Giving is one of the real joys of living and aging! You will be glad you did! Thank you.