Funding and Donations
Base funding for the Conner Museum is provided by WSU’s College of Arts and Sciences and the State of Washington. This funding provides housing for the public exhibit and the research and teaching collections, plus a small amount of money each year for supplies. State and College funding also provides salary for a permanent staff that consists of a single curator plus occasional summer support for one or two graduate students and a few hours per week for an undergraduate timeslip. This small group of museum employees takes care of all tasks for the research and teaching collections and public exhibit, such as responding to loan requests, curation of the existing collections, preparation of incoming specimens, ongoing computerization efforts, and (when time allows) one or two new or improved displays for the exhibit each year.
Your donations to the Museum Development Fund help to buy supplies and pay for student help. Donations to the Museum Endowment Fund help to ensure longer-term support for the museum. The generous donations of past supporters have enabled us to maintain and improve our exhibits and collections.
Your donation, no matter how small, is greatly appreciated.
Monetary Donations
Donations can be given online to the Museum Development Fund. Click here to give to the Museum Development Fund via the WSU Foundation’s online giving site, or scan the QR code below:
Endowment
In addition to the Museum’s Development Fund, we have established an endowment which we hope will grow to provide additional long-term support for museum programs. For information about contributing to the Conner Museum endowment, contact:
Eric Roalson, Interim Director
Conner Museum
PO Box 644236
Washington State University
Pullman, WA 99164-4236
email: eric_roalson@wsu.edu
Taxidermy Donations
Our display and storage space is extremely limited. We accept very, very few taxidermy mounts. In particular, we receive many offers of mounted cougars that we must regretfully decline. (We do not have the space to store them.) We also generally decline head mounts or racks of large game animals and mounts in poor shape (loose limbs, fur or feathers falling out, etc.).
We are more likely to accept donations of tanned pelts, because pelts are much easier to store than mounts. We use pelts for the teaching collection and educational loans. We sometimes use pelt pieces for the touch table.
If we accept a taxidermy mount or pelt, the donation can be claimed as a tax deduction, however, the donor can only deduct the cost of the taxidermy for the specimen. The value of the donation cannot include the cost of the hunting trip to obtain it, storage or cleaning costs, etc.
If you have a mount or pelt in good shape that you think we might be interested in, email the curator at connermuseum@wsu.edu. At the moment, we could use a black bear pelt or rug, preferably of a fairly small bear, for the teaching collection. Our current teaching collection black bear pelt is looking a little ragged after many decades of use.