Academy Report, Volume 3 Number 1, January 1991

              ACADEMY REPORT
TO THE MEMBERS OF THE ACADEMY OF MOTION PICTURE ARTS AND SCIENCES
Volume 3 No. 1  January 1991

Malden: We've Built It;
Now We've Got To Protect It
We've done ourselves proud.
As you read this, the Academy's Center for
Motion Picture Study stands proudly in the
middle of La Cienega Park, receiving the
last touches on her brightwork, carrying a
remarkable cargo: the history of our art
form.
Whether you're a user of this extraordi­nary
facility or someone whose own
career papers will find a
safe, useful home there
or just someone who
drives past the place from
time to time, you as an
Academy member can
share in the sense of ac­complishment
that comes
from having taken on a
genUinely significant
project and carried it
through to a brilliant con­clusion.
But we've still got a big
part of the job to do, and
each individual Academy
member will be asked to
play a direct part in it.
Having amassed the great
collections in our library
and in our film and still
photograph archives, it would be irre­sponsible
of us to leave these literally
irreplaceable materials to the vagaries of
time and declining network viewing
shares.
That's why we're building an Endow­ment
Fund that will guarantee that the
Center for Motion Picture Study will be
staffed and supplied at the level it de­serves
for all foreseeable time. An en­dowment,
in case the term is new to you,
is an accumulation of money that you
never spend. Instead you invest it care­fully,
and use as much of the annual
interest as necessary to provide operating
funds. A gift to an endowment never is
used up; it keeps on helping in perpetu­ity.
Our endowment target, as most of you
know, is 15 million dollars. Under the
vigorous leadership of our Foundation
President Bob Rehme, we've already ac­cumulated
half of that amount in the first
15 months of our campaign.
That was the easy phase though. Most of
it came in large contributions from stu­dios
and other industry companies, as
well as from various charitable founda­tions.
The next seven and one-half mil­lion
will have to come from us. Those of
us who make up the fewer than 6,000
members of this Academy, who have
given our lives to and achieved distinc­tion
in the field of motion pictures, must
now take action to guarantee the future
of this wonderful thing we've made.
Already a remarkable group of our mem­bers
has stepped forward to pledge gifts
of$50,000 or more. If you visit the Center
- as I hope you will - during its open­ing
festivities in the next few days, you'll
see an already impressive donor wall in
the Bob Hope Lobby. A year from now
that wall should read like a Who's Who of
the American film industry in the late 20th
Century. Not all of us, I realize, will be
able to make contributions at the $50,000
level. But when you're approached, as
every member will be over
the next year, keep a
couple things in mind:
• TheAcademyhasnever
asked you for a charitable
contribution in the past,
and it will never ask for
another one in your life­time.
If you agree that
what we've wrought is
valuable, this is theyearto
show your support.
• We're working ina long
time frame. Though the
campaign will end in
1992, your gift can be
spread out over three to
five years i you prefer.
Many pledges will be in
the form of guaranteed
bequests, and several have
already been made in the
form of life insurance policies with the
Foundation as beneficiary.
• If you'd like financial planning help,
we can provide it. A major contribution
may not even cost you much.
Here at the end of the first century of
motion picture history, we've built in the
world center of that art a wonderful and
fitting reliquary for what we and our
forerunners have left behind. Now let's
make sure it gets passed on to our succes-sors.
1