Fundraising Opportunities for Science and Technology Museums

The aim of this paper is to analyze the possibilities of private funding for a special kind of museums: science museums and technology centers. In the last years the economic crisis has impacted on the cultural sector, decreasing the public resources traditionally allocated to museums and arts and heritage in general. That has forced art professionals to develop alternative strategies to get the necessary financial support for museum’s activities. Although the crisis has affected also private companies and individuals, nowadays fundraising from the private sector seems to be the major alternative to the lack of public funds. I will start this paper analyzing the ethical problems in applying fundraising and marketing in general to museums and then proceed focusing on the main private sponsors of museums in general (foundations, private corporations and individuals). I will then concentrate on science museums addressing their peculiarities and characteristics; I will later deal with issues related to concrete private sponsorship for this type of museums. In the conclusion, I will delineate what some of the major future challenges for this sector are.