The Smithsonian Wants To Crowdfund The Restoration Of Neil Armstrong's Spacesuit

The museum just launched its first Kickstarter campaign, giving us a look at a new way public institutions can raise money.

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The Smithsonian and Kickstarter are joining forces to take one small step for the preservation of historical artifacts.

On Monday, the Smithsonian launched a Kickstarter campaign — its first on the 6-year-old crowd-funding site — to restore, 3D scan, and display Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 spacesuit. The suit spent two and a half hours on the surface of the moon; it's an auspicious first Kickstarter campaign for the Smithsonian.

Museum management hopes to raise $500,000 in the next month — enough to prepare the suit for the 50th anniversary of the moon landing in 2019. This is the first of several planned Kickstarter-funded campaigns for the institution, according to Yoonhyung Lee, the Smithsonian's director of digital media philanthropy.

The project is off to a good start, already having already reached 10% of its goal.

The Smithsonian is only partially funded by federal appropriations — everything else has to come from private donors, corporate sponsors, and foundation grants. Right now, the museum has enough money to safely store the spacesuit, but not restore or display it. So, it's reaching out for donations. It's a high-profile project for the museum to take to crowdfunding, but the Smithsonian is hoping it will attract a new kind of donor.

"We want to reach people everywhere," Lee told BuzzFeed News. The museum, she said, is very reliant on recurring donations from longtime museum members — but she and her team hope that a new generation of donors will emerge from among the 9 million people who have backed projects on Kickstarter.

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