National Constitution Center

Face it, if you're involved in any way with the fundraising community, the topic of engagement is almost always on your mind. That's where next week's Engage conference in Philadelphia can help.

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LIFT-Philadelphia, a local anti-poverty organization, has selected David Eisner, the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, to receive its inaugural Lifting Communities Award in recognition of his exceptional commitment to civic engagement and service. The award will be presented at LIFT-Philadelphia’s annual Spring Celebration on April 12 at the Racquet Club of Philadelphia.

Barbara Allen will receive $50,000 as one of 10 winners of the Purpose Prize, given to Americans over 60 who have reinvented themselves, tackling social problems in this latter stage of life.

As founder of Fresh Artists, Allen, 62, of Lafayette Hill, in just two years has put more than 400 pieces of bold, lush, gorgeous "refrigerator art" from Philadelphia schoolchildren into corporate boardrooms and surprising spaces around the region and nation.

Philadelphia, PA, November 18, 2009 — The National Constitution Center Board of Trustees announced today that it has appointed David Eisner, former Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation for National and Community Service, to serve as the new President and Chief Executive Officer of the Center.  Eisner succeeds Linda E. Johnson, a member of the Center’s Board of Trustees, who has served as Acting President and Chief Executive Officer since the Board began its national search in January 2009.

April 3, 2009, Philadelphia Business Journal — The jobless rate may be rising, but a handful of arts-and-cultural organizations in Philadelphia are going through prolonged searches to fill their top positions.

What a grand time. FundRaising Success ventured into the tricky awards arena for the first time this year. And even though it was all new to us, it was a terrific experience from start to finish. We had a better-than-expected showing — 33 packages in all, submitted by 10 agencies and two organizations — a small but enthusiastic group of judges and a lot of fun.

Here’s a shocker: Fundraising is tough. Joan Specter, who’s part of the development team at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, spent quite a bit of time driving that point home to me during a conversation I had with her recently.

She was talking about her work with the center, where she focuses on securing major gifts, and explaining how much patience, tact and tenacity it takes to get someone to part with, oh, say, a million bucks.

When the National Constitution Center broke ground in Philadelphia, one organizational challenge was to get people from around the country to invest in something that they had never seen before, nor could readily conceptualize. At first, the organization was having trouble communicating to the public exactly what this building was all about. Many donors presumably wondered: What is a Constitution Center, anyway?

After years of selling a dream — raising funds for something that didn’t even exist yet — the folks at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia weren’t about to be stymied by a couple dozen dead Presbyterians.

The former Philadelphians surfaced, so to speak, in 2001, on the first day of construction on the museum and education center dedicated to enlightening the public about the Constitution of the United States of America. It seems that part of the center’s parking garage was being built on an 18th-century cemetery that had been moved in the 1950s — most of it, anyway.