CHRONICLE OF PHILANTHROPY CASE STUDY
MARCH 01, 2015
Saving Rosie the Riveter’s Factory—and
Salvaging a Capital Campaign
Photo: YANKEE AIR MUSEUM
“Tribute Rosies” help publicize the campaign and raise money by posing with attendees in front
of a historic Douglas A-1 Skyraider aircraft at the Yankee Air Museum’s 2013 “Thunder Over
Michigan” Airshow.
By Avi Wolfman-Arent
By early 2013, the Michigan Aerospace Foundation had spent more than a decade trying to finance a
new museum. After showing some initial promise, its capital campaign stagnated amid the recession
and faded enthusiasm from donors.
Enter Rosie the Riveter.
Based on a real woman who worked at a wartime manufacturing plant, the character has long been
an icon of female empowerment. But while Rosie endured, her former place of employment—the
Willow Run Bomber Plant in Ypsilanti, Mich.—was under threat of demolition.
That threat, however, proved advantageous for the Michigan Aerospace Foundation. After consulting
with the factory building’s current owners, the foundation announced it would attempt to purchase a
144,000-square-foot chunk of the doomed plant, preserve it, and convert the space into a new
museum. All it needed to do was meet the asking price: $8-million.
Overnight, the foundation’s once-anonymous, long-suffering fundraising efforts became the “Save
the Willow Run Bomber Plant” campaign.
Since the new campaign began in 2013, it has been featured by NPR, the “NBC Nightly News,” and
the Associated Press. The nonprofit has churned out lawn signs, distributed pins, and even helped
set a record for most Rosie the Riveter impersonators in one place. As it all unfolded, the group—
which is dedicated to preserving Michigan’s aviation history—received donations from World War II
buffs, feminists, and well-wishers nationwide.
“There are times where this wasn’t so much an organized campaign as much as it was like we started
a forest fire,” says Michael Montgomery, the foundation’s fundraising consultant for this project.
On October 30, the foundation closed a deal for its portion of the plant.
Mr. Montgomery lobbied the foundation to target Willow Run and says his efforts were as much
about changing the foundation’s self-image as they were about raising its public profile.
He recalls telling the board, “Guys, if you ever want to get this thing funded, you’re either going to
have to raise the money yourselves or you’re going to have stop being the old guy, old airplane club.”
Mr. Montgomery believes the Save the Willow Run Bomber Plant campaign proves that even small
niche nonprofits can look for opportunities to expand their reach. That doesn’t mean a national
campaign necessarily but rather establishing links between their work and the larger public.
“You’ve got to connect the work you’re trying to fund to things the larger community can understand
and care about,” he says.
By the Numbers
Total Donors in 2012 (the year before the campaign): 285
Money Raised in 2012: $75,560
Total Donors in 2013: 1,844
Money Raised in 2013: $351,757
Total Donors in 2014: 3,408
Money Raised in 2014: $1,219,112
Note from Montgomery Consulting: This article was originally published on March 1, 2015 in the
“Toolkit” section in the inaugural edition of www.philanthropy.com Figures cited by the Chronicle are
for funds raised from fundraising activities discussed in the article and so exclude proceeds from earlier
fundraising, a major government appropriation and non-cash resources that brought the first phase of
this campaign the rest of the way to its fundraising goal of $8 million.