Museum Annual Fund Drive

Here is a sample of what your gift can do...

$75 will outfit us with supplies for one of six summer programs, held at the Museum on days when there is music in the park—all for free!

$150 to purchase apples and cups for 1,000 first grade students who make cider at the Mary Olson Farm.

$350 for a year’s worth of cream, salt and jars so that 1,000 kindergarteners can make butter while on their fieldtrip to the Museum.

$500 for a year to feed our friendly chickens at the Mary Olson Farm, just wait

Yes, count on me!
I want to help support the operation of the White River Valley Museum.
Click here to download a donation form.

Please return the completed form to:
White River Valley Museum, 918 H Street SE, Auburn WA  98002 or
Or call (253) 288-7433, to immediately charge your donation.

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Dear Museum Patron,

Here are some actual stories about children who experienced the learning environment while they visited the White River Valley Museum and the Mary Olson Farm.  

A kindergarten class stands in front of the Muckleshoot canoe scene in the Museum, and the tour guide asks them to identify some of the items they see. One little girl points out the kerosene lantern.

“Where do you think they got that?” asks the guide.

“They made it,” announces one girl.

“Good idea, but way back in history, where do you think they got the metal to make it?”

The girl ponders, “At a yard sale?”

Sixth-grade boys stand with their hands shoved in low-slung pants on the bank of Olson Stream. Despite the low water level several salmon are battling their way upstream to spawn. Adolescent silent disinterest permeates the scene, but one boy shyly asks, “Can I get a hose and add more water so that one, pointing, can get over the log?”

In a first-grade classroom preparing to visit the Farm the children are discussing orchards. The teacher asks, “So what do you know about orchards?”

One girl says knowingly, “If you don’t put a fence around it the birds and worms will get to the apples and will eat them and there will be no apples.”

For me and perhaps for you as well, the moments described above prove that children yearn to learn about our physical world, self sufficiency, and about our past.  And you know there is NO better place for those kinds of experiences than the White River Valley Museum or the Mary Olson Farm. Ours is credited with being the best community museum in the state, and I don’t say that just because I am the Board President. I say it because I have seen this place in action!

We provide curricular based field trips to four (!) grade levels of children from the Auburn School District, and many classes in other districts and private schools.  That’s well over 5,000 children a year—each going away with a life-long memory.  Additionally, many family and children’s programs are offered at the museum either at no cost or included in our modest admission, a pricing policy we have long adhered to that is even more important today.

So I ask if you will help your community museum carry on these educational programs with a donation to our Annual Fund Drive. I thank you for your generous help, and hope to see you at the museum soon.

Sincerely,

Ronnie Beyersdorf, Board President

P.S. We hope to open the Mary Olson Farm in the summer of 2010!