Join in the Campaign for Tomorrow's Newberry

Co-chairs Andrew McNally IV, Victoria Herget, and Roger Baskes.
Campaign Co-chairs Andrew McNally IV, Victoria Herget, and Roger Baskes.

As we near the end of our 125th anniversary, we are reaching the culmination of the $25 million Campaign for Tomorrow’s Newberry. We have surpassed the 90% milestone, and encourage you to make your gift now and help further our mission of preserving a precious cultural heritage and fostering its use. You can support our campaign, and celebrate the Newberry’s anniversary year, by attending the 125th Anniversary Celebration with David McCullough on May 13, 2013.  All proceeds from the event will support the campaign and the Newberry’s unrestricted endowment.

The Campaign at Work

Thanks to the generosity of many early donors to the campaign, we’ve been able to begin work on several important projects that include

  • Installing compact shelving
  • Redesigning our website
  • Celebrating our 125th anniversary through The Newberry 125 exhibition amd our book, The Newberry 125, Stories of Our Collection
  • Cataloging more than 30,000 items not previously available to readers, including seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French pamphlets and titles on early modern religion
  • Introducing new public programs such as “Conversations at the Newberry”
  • Funding new fellowships and select staff positions

Campaign Opportunities Ahead

It’s not too late to support the campaign, through a restricted gift to the Newberry, a gift to our Annual Fund, or attendance at our 125th Anniversary Celebration in May. Many important initiatives remain to be funded:

  • Improving our facilities by creating a first-floor orientation center and a café for visitors, expanding our bookstore, enhancing our exhibition spaces, and restoring our lobby to its original luster
  • Endowing additional staff positions
  • Creating a digital innovations fund to enable us to employ digital tools to make our collections more accessible to scholars and the public, and to permit better communication of research findings
  • Enhancing funds available for acquisitions
  • Growing our Annual Fund

The Impact of the Campaign for Tomorrow’s Newberry

When we achieve our goals, the benefits will be felt not only here in the Newberry, but also across Chicago and even around the world. This campaign will allow our collection to grow, our programs to reach a wider audience, our building to provide the spaces and technology that readers, visitors, and staff most need, and our service to remain at the highest levels. We will welcome more scholars to the Newberry, train more educators and students, foster more research, and help disseminate more knowledge. The success of the Campaign for Tomorrow’s Newberry will help guarantee that what has been accomplished here since we opened our doors 125 years ago will continue and grow greater as we move forward into the twenty-first century.

Join the Campaign!

To help realize our goals, we now turn to you. To receive more information about the Campaign for Tomorrow’s Newberry and related funding opportunities, contact Meredith Petrov at petrovm@newberry.org or (312) 255-3687.

To support the Campaign for Tomorrow’s Newberry with a gift to the Annual Fund, you can Donate Now or contact Vince Firpo at firpov@newberry.org or (312) 255-3599.