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Special Gift Opportunities

Opportunities to Support Colonial Williamsburg with a Special Gift

Gifts from Donors Make a Substantial and Lasting Difference to Colonial Williamsburg

Challenge Grants

NEH $600,000 Grant for 3D Visualization Lab Endowment requires Colonial Williamsburg to raise $1.8 million
Virtual reality offers new approaches for engaging present and future generations in the study of the American Revolution, citizenship, and democracy.  Colonial Williamsburg plans to establish a 3D Visualization Lab within its Digital History Center to spearhead the development of 3D virtual-reality technologies for public education and research purposes.  Creating Williamsburg as a virtual environment involves modeling buildings, furnishings, objects, streets, gardens, and landscapes – all of which will be fitted into a digitally-modeled terrain. Users will be able to stroll down the Duke of Gloucester Street, enter buildings, visit backyards and gardens, and tour public spaces, experiencing the town as it was when Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Patrick Henry championed the cause for independence.  The grant with its matching requirement will create a $2.4 million endowment for this initiative. 

NEH $1 million “We the People” Grant for African American History Endowment requires Colonial Williamsburg to raise $3 million
Over the years, Colonial Williamsburg has developed programming that demonstrates the impact of African Americans in colonial Virginia. The NEH challenge grant will establish a $4 million endowment to sustain and improve the Foundation’s African American history interpretation for on- and off-site visitors.  Funds generated by the endowment will support a variety of projects including improved technology and new program development, a research historian, and a research fellows program.  To date, the Foundation has received gifts totaling $510,000 toward the $3 million match requirement.     

Museums and Collections

Water ColorSlave Girl Water Color  
Funds needed:  $100,000
Depictions of enslaved African Americans are rare – particularly sympathetic renderings without caricature or stereotyping like this one, which has recently been added to Colonial Williamsburg’s collections.  The portrait was painted by Mary Anna Randolph Custis, whose father was George Washington’s step-grandson and who grew up at Arlington House, the Custis family plantation where the girl in the portrait is believed to have served.  A year after completing the painting, Mary Custis married Robert E. Lee, one of America’s most celebrated generals. 

Two Conservator Interns
Funds needed:  $70,000
One of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum’s treasures is the Carolina Room, a very rare, early 19th-century painted interior from a rural North Carolina planter’s house, acquired by Colonial Williamsburg in 1956.  The room’s condition has been analyzed, and appropriate conservation treatment is now underway.  Approximately 50% of the painted surface has been consolidated and cleaned of non-original materials by paintings conservator Shelley Svoboda and conservation interns.  As the in-lab cleaning of each part of the room is completed, it is re-installed in the Folk Art Museum gallery.  A gift to underwrite the funding of interns will help Colonial Williamsburg complete the restoration of the Carolina Room. 

Historic Area Exhibition Buildings and Gardens

Mosquito Curtains for the Governor’s Bedchamber
Funds needed:  $10,825
The governor of Virginia needs mosquito curtains for his bed!  Writing in 1764, a sleepless and frustrated Virginia planter observed that the “vile musketoes [are] as plenty as bees in a hive.”  In an era before air conditioning and window screens, gauze bed curtains provided the only nighttime relief from the biting insects.  Accordingly, Governor Botetourt paid a Williamsburg upholsterer one shilling, six pence for “puting [sic] up muscato curtains in his room” at the Palace.  In order to replicate that 1769 order, new curtains will be fabricated from delicate green linen gauze and hand sewn with all the appropriate trim.     

Historic Area Costuming Accessories     
Funds needed: $5,000 for annual eyewear expenses, $61,000 for annual shoe expenses
More than 800 Colonial Williamsburg employees work in costume in the Historic Area, taverns, period stores, and in special programs.  Keeping them well attired is the responsibility of the Costume Design Center.  Interpreters wear reproduction 18th-century clothing and accessories.  Accessories include new and replacement eyewear and shoes; the goal is authenticity of appearance.  Eyeglasses are plain with round lenses and wire frames and cost about $150 from a specialized vendor.  Shoes cost approximately $125 a pair; some are made by our shoemakers, while others are manufactured in England and the U.S.  Shoe styles vary to reflect the different life styles of 18th-century Williamsburg society.

Reproduction 18th-century Law Library at the Courthouse
Funds needed: $12,500 will underwrite 7-8 reproduction texts for Courthouse display and for use as primary source materials for interpreters.
Colonial Williamsburg seeks to reproduce facsimile period books by purchasing eighteenth-century law texts that will be bound by Master Bookbinder Bruce Plumley to create a Courthouse law library similar to those of Virginia gentlemen-lawyers Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and others.  The books will be displayed in the courthouse and used as primary information sources by Courthouse interpretive staff.

GardenGarden Endowments (3)
Funds needed to endow one of these gardens:  $200,000
You can ensure that one of Colonial Williamsburg’s gardens continues to delight guests for generations to come.  Filled with the riotous color of spring bulbs, the luxurious green of the summer months, or the blaze of autumn leaves, Historic Area gardens are beautiful works of art as well as illustrations of an important facet of 18th-century life.  An endowment for the gardens at the Coke-Garrett House, the James Geddy House (pictured), or the Thomas Everard House will maintain your chosen garden at its present level in perpetuity. 

Historic Trades

Historic Trades Summer Internships
Funds needed for 4 summer interns:  $20,000
Colonial Williamsburg’s Historic Trades program, begun in1936, has evolved to become the largest and most diverse museum-operated trades program in the world and one of the most historically accurate, with a strong emphasis on hands-on practice and documentary research.  Colonial Williamsburg currently operates 30 trades at 22 trade sites. Tradesmen and women represent the skills, ingenuity, and dedication to excellence on which American society and our economy were built.  Funds will provide individuals with 3-month trade shop experiences to learn about the trade(s), develop skills, gain public contact and service experience, and acquire insights about museum and living history careers.

Historic Area Programming

Under the RedcoatColonial Williamsburg Re-enactment Weekends 
Under the Redcoat: British Army’s Occupation of Williamsburg near the End of the Revolution
Funds needed to support 2009 re-enactment weekend: $20,000
Colonial Williamsburg draws hundreds of re-enactors to an annual 3-day weekend with British soldiers under General Cornwallis occupying Williamsburg in 1781 prior to the battle of Yorktown, the last major encounter of the American Revolution.  Encamped in tents on Palace Green and near the Courthouse, British soldiers patrol the streets, keeping the patriot citizenry in line and illustrating the restrictions on personal freedom that accompanied the occupation.  They perform military drills, replace the American flag at the Capitol with the Union Jack, and women camp followers demonstrate how they supported the troops by nursing, teaching, mending, sewing, and cooking for the officers.  

Prelude to Victory: American and French Troops Preparing for the Siege of Yorktown during the Final Days of the American Revolution
Funds needed to support 2009 re-enactment weekend: $20,000
Prelude to Victory is a three-day weekend that attracts hundreds of re-enactors portraying members of the Continental Army.  Working together with Colonial Williamsburg interpreters, the re-enactors help visitors understand the Continental Army’s late September 1781 preparations for the siege of Yorktown, under the command of General George Washington.  Special programs include a re-created military field hospital at the Governor’s Palace, the court-martial of a soldier accused of attacking and mortally wounding his commanding officer, and a supply sergeant who faces the realities of few supplies and less money.  In addition, the weekend includes parades, military music, and lively demonstrations of military tactics and weaponry. 

Revolutionary CityRevolutionary City 
Gifts of any size are welcome.  
In 2008, Colonial Williamsburg’s interactive street theater, Revolutionary City, includes new vignettes:  a love story between Edmund Randolph, whose family is loyal to the King, and Elizabeth Nicholas, daughter of patriots; two slaves who respond to Lord Dunmore’s proclamation of freedom by deciding to run away to join British forces; and a program for kids and families Get Revved! Revolutionary City for Young Patriots.  Your support funds story development and training and costuming of the actor/interpreters. 

Kimball Theatre Programming Endowment Fund
Funding minimum for plaque recognition:  $5,000
The Kimball Theatre offers excellent entertainment seven days a week. A first-rate movie house for more than six decades, the theater has become a favorite venue for Williamsburg’s artistic, educational, religious, and cultural events.  Founding and sustaining benefactors are publicly recognized on permanent plaques in the theater’s lobby. 

John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library/Research

Research Fellowships
Funds needed: $100,000
The John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library has established a thriving program that brings scholars from all over the country to make use of its collections.  Based on that success, an endowment is being created to support up to ten fellows annually whose work focuses on the colonial period, the American Revolution, and the early republic.

Archaeological Research Consulting
Funds needed:  $10,000
With the help of a consultant archaeobotanist, Colonial Williamsburg will analyze microscopic plant remains recovered at the Ravenscroft archaeology site in the Historic Area.  The building on the site where the remains were found may have originally been built as a bakeshop; flour ground in one of the town’s windmills would have been stored there prior to baking.  A gift for this project will allow us to move forward in the analysis of one of Colonial Williamsburg’s ongoing archaeological excavations.

Documents of Freedom Fund
Funds requested: $10,000 or more for endowment fund
DocumentThe collection of the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library includes rare items of great significance to the American Revolution in Williamsburg and Virginia—among them a copy of William Stone’s 1823 facsimile of the Declaration of Independence; a collection of autographs of the signers of the Declaration; published works relating to the debate over American rights; and an original manuscript of Patrick Henry’s 1765 Stamp Act Resolves.  These materials are of inestimable value in illustrating the importance of what took place in Virginia and America from the 1760s to the 1780s.  During this crucial period, ideas were articulated that justified resistance to the British Crown and a shift in colonists’ thinking transpired that ultimately led to the creation of the new republic.  By creating an endowment fund, Colonial Williamsburg aims to strengthen this special collection by acquiring additional rare books, manuscripts, letters, newspapers, treatises, broadsides, diaries, declarations of rights, state constitutions, and other documents that illuminate British and American views during this formative period in America’s history.  With funds on hand, Colonial Williamsburg will be able to respond quickly when a document becomes available.

Examples of specific Documents of Freedom that Colonial Williamsburg seeks:

  • Acts passed at a Congress of the United States of America …Richmond, Printed by Augustine Davis for the General Assembly of Virginia, 1789.  The rarest printing of the Acts of the first Congress of the United States, containing much of the legislation fundamental to the establishment of government under the Constitution and one of the earliest printings of the Bill of Rights.  Cost: $18,500
  • Letter of Daniel Jones to his son Daniel in Cambridge, April 13, 1766, announcing the repeal of the Stamp Act.  The author directs his son to deliver the news to the Sons of Liberty if it has not already reached Cambridge.  Cost: $7,500
  • Expose des motifs de la conduit du roi, relativement a L’Angleterre. Paris, 1779.  This is the scarce official first edition of the French government’s justification for going to war against Great Britain during the American Revolution.  Cost: $3,000
  • Stevens, John. Examen du gouvernement d’Angleterre, compare aux constitutions des Etats-Unis … Paris, 1789.  This is the first French edition of an early work on the Constitution.  Cost: $1,575

Educational Outreach

Teachers and studentsSpecial Opportunity for Parents and Grandparents: Electronic Field Trips Bring History Alive!
A gift of $500 provides your local school or other deserving school with the seven-program series offered during the school year.
Colonial Williamsburg’s annual series of Electronic Field Trips inspires students in grades 4-8 with the stories, people and events that created the American nation.  Designed to engage and inform, these nationally broadcast programs allow participants to ask on-the-air questions of Colonial Williamsburg interpreters, historians, and educators and to interact with other students through Web sites that include projects, interactive Web adventures, primary source documents, and electronic bulletin boards.  Registration also includes teachers’ guides with pre- and post-broadcast lesson plans.

Teaching American History Conferences
With a gift of $33,000, you can provide up to 75 teachers in your favorite school district with this opportunity to increase their history knowledge and acquire exciting lesson plans and classroom resources. 
Help Colonial Williamsburg bring living history experiences to teachers in your school district through 1- or 2-day conferences on teaching American history.  In workshops around the country, teachers are exploring historical content, analyzing primary sources, participating in simulations, and role playing with Colonial Williamsburg’s character interpreters.  Each conference helps teachers meet academic-content standards, learn innovative teaching strategies, and support interdisciplinary studies.  Teachers receive lesson plans, facsimile primary sources, reproduction artifacts, and one live Colonial Williamsburg Electronic Field Trip broadcast to their classrooms. 

Bringing Colonial Williamsburg to You: Podcasts/Vodcasts 
Funds needed for a year of weekly podcasts: $20,000; gifts of any size welcome.
Visitors to Colonial Williamsburg’s Web site can sample the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries by downloading podcasts, 15-minute audio programs. Using podcast software, such as iTunes or iPodder, podcasts (audio interviews) and vodcasts (video interviews) are downloadable at the listener’s convenience and played on a computer or portable media player. Weekly interviews conducted by former television correspondent Lloyd Dobyns are conversational, informational, and fun and cover a wide range of topics. He takes you behind the scenes to meet historical interpreters, musicians, tradesmen, curators, chefs, historians, and more.

General Support

IRA Gift Incentive Extended Through 2009:  Make History While Reducing Your Taxes 
Are the mandatory minimum withdrawals from your Individual Retirement Account providing you with extra income that you don’t really need—while boosting your tax burden and causing more of your social security benefits to be taxable?  Then you’ll be pleased to learn that Congress has extended the incentive for donating up to $100,000 from your IRA to charities like Colonial Williamsburg through the end of 2009. What better way to help make history at Colonial Williamsburg while totally avoiding income tax?  Learn more online about this tax-wise way to support Colonial Williamsburg’s educational programs or contact Margaret McGraw at 1-888-CWF-1776 or email: Gifts@cwf.org.

Unrestricted Endowment - Recognition on Donor Plaque at the Visitor Center             
Funds needed to establish a named endowment:  $100,000 
One of the most valuable ways to support the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation is through the establishment of an unrestricted endowment.  Your fund will help with the restoration and conservation of historic buildings, archaeology, innovative programming, museums, educational outreach, costumes for interpreters, carriages, preservation of rare animal breeds – in short, everything Colonial Williamsburg does.  If a particular aspect of Colonial Williamsburg’s mission appeals to you, it is also possible to establish a restricted endowment for that specific purpose.  Endowment gifts are recognized on the Visitor Center donor plaque and in Colonial Williamsburg’s annual report.   

Matching Gifts Make Your Donation Go Further  
If your company has a matching gift program, your donation to Colonial Williamsburg may be doubled or even tripled.  Find out if Colonial Williamsburg qualifies for your company’s matching gift program


For more information on how you can support
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation,
please call the Development Office at 1-888-CWF-1776
or e-mail gifts@cwf.org

To make a direct donation now, please click here.