Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington

In late 2003, The Collins Group was retained to help design a broad-based public campaign to complete SAM’s $180 million campaign, the largest arts campaign to date in the history of the Northwest. Capitalizing on the “once in a lifetime” opportunity presented by the creation of the Olympic Sculpture Park, expansion of the downtown museum, and renovation of the Seattle Asian Art Museum – as well as SAM’s 75th anniversary – The Collins Group worked with a committee of community leaders and SAM trustees to develop an innovative and exciting variation on a traditional campaign. This hybrid model, which SAM’s Board enthusiastically embraced, built on the momentum created by significant lead gifts and engaged the community early enough in the campaign to make it truly a community-wide effort. This, in turn, helped to leverage major gifts and corporate gifts and wrap up the campaign. The Collins Group provided campaign counsel to help implement this plan and advise SAM on strategies for developing $10,000-$10 million gifts. In partnership with Pyramid Communications, The Collins Group also worked to help ensure that fundraising for larger gifts was coordinated with the community campaign through communications, public relations, and outreach activities. SAM exceeded its goal and the groundbreaking Olympic Sculpture Park opened to the public in 2007.