Donor options include:

• The Sixty Club: Sixty Founding Memberships, or "Plank Owner" designations, will be solicited at $16,667 each. Traditionally, a "Plank Owner" was an individual who served as one of the original crew members who commissioned or re-commissioned a ship. The goal of 60 participants will match Saratoga's hull number, CV-60.
• Guardians of Freedom: Sponsors will be sought for each of CV-60's 23 overseas deployments, at $50,000 each. These sponsorships will include prominent but tasteful recognition within the Saratoga Museum Historical Walkway, through which all 550,000 projected visitors will pass in order to board the carrier. Corporate sponsorships may also include a trade-show type of exhibit in the Corporate Sponsor Hall in the hangar bay, where donors will have permanent "themed" display areas to showcase their products and services, particularly those whose technology helped win the Cold War.
• Lend a Hand Program: Saratoga is currently moored at Pier 1 in Middletown, about 33,500 feet away from the carrier pier at Quonset. Sponsors will launch a public campaign to sell mounted, one-foot sections of hawser (rope), symbolic of the donor's contribution to bringing Saratoga one foot closer to her final home. At $30 per foot, it would take only 1167 contributors to raise $1 million. (A similar program is being planned for aviators, with the prize being sections of arresting wire that has exceeded its useful life.)
• Shipmate Memorial Walk: Engraved paving bricks on the walkway leading to the Saratoga will be available for purchase by CV-3, CVA-60 and CV-60 ship's company, air crew and their families.
• Corporate/Major Donor Campaign: Naming rights for each of the major elements within the Park, ranging from the Hangar Bays aboard ship to the Visitor Center and the rehabilitated Mitchell Mobile Hangar, will be offered to major capital campaign donors and/or corporate sponsors. Education and vocational training programs and facilities, as well as specific high-tech opportunities such as portions of the Virtual Reality Pavilion and the simulators are particularly appropriate for sponsorship. Organizers will tailor individual packages for such participation, and there will be opportunities for involvement at many different donation/sponsorship levels. Specific exhibits, such as USS Rhode Island, Women in Aviation, the Tuskegee Airmen and a myriad of others will be available for restricted donation sponsorships.
• Planned giving, such as charitable remainder trusts, may also be an appropriate consideration. Merrill Lynch Trust Company is assisting with that effort.

Last Updated:
9/29/01