Draft Letter on Carter Barron Amphitheater Assistance

DRAFT LETTER TO MR. ROBERT LINOWES

Revised February 10, 2004 Eugster

Dear Mr. Linowes,

This letter is in response to your correspondence of December 23, 2003.

Thanks for your letter and expressions of support to help to raise funds for the Carter Barron Amphitheater.  We appreciate your interest in the park and your vision of how we might collaborate.

Our meetings with you and your colleagues have been fruitful and we share many of your goals. From our meetings and the exchange of correspondence over the last six months it seems to me that we have somewhat different visions for the Carter Barron Amphitheater and a different process for achieving our goals.

Our earlier correspondence outlined our interests and concerns regarding the roof, the need for an endowment that includes funding for maintaining the facility, and the relationship with a nonprofit foundation. Should you be willing to consider supporting a partial covering, an endowment for the amphitheater that includes funding for maintenance, and the ideas we suggested earlier for working with the nonprofit foundation, we stand ready to work with you to develop this partnership.  However, the ideas you outlined for a complete covering of the amphitheater, the endowment without maintenance funds and the creation of a nonprofit organization to manage the programming for Carter Baron are not acceptable to us in their present construct.

Should you wish to pursue this arrangement as we described it earlier, we will be able to provide you with alternatives for donor recognition which comply with the National Park guidance on this subject.

We believe that some compromise on the roof, the nonprofit foundation arrangement and the endowment is essential if we are to reach mutual agreement on a fundraising effort with you and your staff.  As we indicated earlier, these types of arrangements need to be agreed upon in detail and approved by both parties in a Fundraising Agreement and Plan before we are able to make any commitments to you.

We do appreciate your interest in Carter Barron and the Greater Washington National Parks and hope that you will continue to work directly with us to see if we can reach an agreement.

If you agree with our suggestions we are willing to meet with you and your staff again to explore the elements of a partnership.  Please let us know if such a meeting is of interest to you.

Sincerely,

Joe Lawler