With key attractions inoperable and funding down, U.S. Airborne & Special Operations Museum facing challenges

As its operational nonprofit struggles to find new funding sources, Fayetteville’s U.S. Airborne & Special Operations Museum may be unable to sustain its current offerings to both the community and the thousands of visitors who come to Fayetteville each year to see it. 

The U.S. Airborne & Special Operations Museum (ASOM), located next to Segra Stadium in the center of downtown Fayetteville, is the first U.S. Army Museum built outside the perimeter of an Army installation. It is consistently ranked among the top museums in the state and is often considered Fayetteville’s number one tourist attraction. Admission is free.

Many of the programs that enhance the museum’s experience and ties to the community are provided by the Airborne & Special Operations Museum Foundation, its Executive Director Renee Lane told CityView. While the Army’s staff handles the core functions, or the “meat and potatoes,” of the museum — like managing the exhibits and collections and securing artifacts — the ASOM Foundation supports the museum by hosting events, planning educational programs, managing its website and promoting ASOM on social media, Lane said. 

The museum was originally owned by the foundation, but the foundation gifted it to the Army in 2005 “to better manage and grow the collection and maintain exhibits,” according to the foundation’s July newsletter. 

Now, the ASOM Foundation is facing what it says is a “critical budget deficit” as major attractions and sources of revenue are down, which foundation members say could compromise the group’s ability to hold events, bring in new exhibits and conduct educational programs for students. 

The foundation’s operating budget for this fiscal year is expected to be around $1 million, Lane said, though this could change as the budgeting process progresses. The nonprofit faces additional challenges as it looks to cover a nearly $200,000 shortfall that arose when the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners in June denied funding the foundation previously used to cover outstanding operating expenses. 

“We just have to move on from all this and see how we can make ends meet,” Lane told CityView. 

The board’s decision to cut off the ASOM Foundation’s perennial funding in the county’s fiscal year budget was not an isolated decision. The county denied funding for several other nonprofits which had previously received the government grants — and now have to scramble to make up for the unanticipated loss of funds.

Funding problems

The ASOM Foundation raises funds for the museum to bring in new and special exhibits, as well as gallery renovations and other projects that enhance visitors’ experiences of the museum, Lane said. It also operates the museum’s gift shop and maintains outdoor grounds, including the landscape, monuments, statues, pavers, and puts on the annual “Field of Honor” display. 

The ASOM Foundation brought in about $1 million in revenue last year, a decrease of $3 million from the year before, according to tax records. The foundation’s funding influx in 2022 came primarily from an increase in government grants, namely $3 million from the state of North Carolina. Prior to 2022, the foundation’s revenues were largely consistent year over year and generally below $1 million, with the exception of 2015 and 2019, tax records show. 

Lane said this year’s operating deficit has been caused partially by two of the museum’s major attractions and the foundation’s revenue streams being out of service: the Pritzker Motion Simulator and the museum theater. The 244-seat theater closed after a car ran off the road and crashed into the ASOM in February 2023, killing the driver and setting off the museum’s sprinkler system. 

The Pritzker Motion Simulator, installed in 2015, is an immersive virtual reality experience in which passengers are put in the first-person perspective of soldiers fighting in airborne and Special Operations units. The simulator had to be closed in November 2023 because its electronics aged out, Lane said, describing the loss of revenue as a “huge hit to our bottom line.” 

Fixing the ride is not an option at this point, Lane said, given the cost and technological know-how that would be required. 

“It’s beyond anybody’s expertise here, so we kind of have to close the door on that and look to the future for a new experience,” Lane told CityView. 

The museum is owned and operated by the U.S. Army, so it will not close as a result of the ASOM Foundation’s budget deficit, Spectrum News previously reported. However, the operating budget deficit could impact the foundation’s “ability to promote the museum and generate tourism revenue for the county,” Lane told CityView.

Lane cited examples of “cost-cutting measures,” like a hiring freeze and reduced hours for museum store staff, that have been implemented as the ASOM Foundation struggles to keep up with operation costs. According to a post on the foundation’s Facebook page, the foundation has also halted new programs as a result of the deficit. Educational programs and opportunities remain a key part of the foundation’s enhancement of the museum, Lane said, with 3,500 students from 34 county schools and 45 schools in the region having visited the museum this year as part of the ongoing programs. 

Lane and the foundation’s operation director said the deficit also could impact the ASOM Foundation’s ability to preserve memorials and public art installations on the grounds, such as the “Iron Mike” statue. Lane said the conservation cost of all the statues is $13,500, and a full restoration of the “Iron Mike” statue would cost at least $100,000.

A lack of revenue also means the ASOM Foundation cannot fix its motion simulator ride, Lane said. Because the ride is owned by the foundation, the Army cannot make repairs on the simulator, she said. Since the Army is a federal agency, it can’t decide to give money to a nonprofit unless the allocation is an official grant award.

The Army is assessing the theater’s repair needs, Fort Liberty spokesperson Cheryle Rivas told CityView.

“They’re currently soliciting a design to determine the extent of the necessary repairs,” Rivas said in June about Fort Liberty’s engineering division. “Of course, that’s going to be subject to the availability of funds for that and then for the annual budget.” 

The ASOM Foundation receives the majority of its funding through non-government grants and individual contributions and donations, which Lane said can come in the form of purchased monument pavers, gift shop sales, membership contributions or one-time donations. In 2023, the foundation received about 70% of its revenue from contributions and grants, or $693,519 of approximately $1 million; $183,750 of this funding came from government grants, according to the foundation’s tax filing, with local government contributions accounting for about 18% of foundation’s total revenue. 

But much of the money the foundation receives from grants or fundraising is restricted to specific projects, Lane said, and cannot be used to fund salaries or other recurring expenses in the operating budget. For example, the foundation is now engaged in a capital campaign to raise funds for a new gallery, but those donations cannot be used to close the gap in the operating budget, Lane said.

County’s decision to pull funding

On June 5, the ASOM Foundation and museum supporters received news that further exacerbated concerns over funding: In a 5-2 vote, Cumberland County’s Board of Commissioners denied its ask to provide annual funds to close the foundation’s operating budget shortfall. The county has contributed money to the foundation since the museum opened downtown in 2000, providing between $125,000 and $200,000 consistently over the years, according to county budget records. 

Lane said the county’s contributions have been used by the ASOM Foundation to offset its annual operating expenses every year for the past 19 years. These annual contributions, awarded during the budget cycle, have accounted for about 10-20% of the foundation’s operating budget, Lane said. 

She said that the foundation is “not entitled” to the county’s funding, but the sudden lack of that contribution has introduced further uncertainty for the nonprofit at a time when the museum is down two key attractions. 

“I don’t know what the future is going to look like,” Lane told CityView following the county’s decision. 

The $85,000 allocated to the ASOM Foundation last year was the lowest amount the county has contributed since the museum opened. That number is half of what the ASOM Foundation received during fiscal year 2022-2023, according to county budget records. The recommended budget had included a $170,000 allocation, in line with previous years.  

In a meeting held in June of last year, county commissioners discussed cutting some nonprofits’ funding in consideration of additional ARPA funding organizations received during the pandemic. At the time, Commission Chairman Glenn Adams suggested that the county cut the foundation’s funding in half for 2023, and potentially reduce it another half in 2024.

“This goes to a foundation, because the military actually runs the airborne museum,” Adams said at the meeting. “I don’t know what that foundation does on that. I would not look to fund that $170,000 either.” 

The board ultimately agreed with Adams’ $85,000 funding recommendation in the county’s fiscal year 2023-24 budget. 

What happened this budget cycle

This year, the county denied the foundation’s initial request of $200,000, submitted in early 2024 during the annual 2024-25 budget request for outside agencies. Lane said she discovered the request had been denied when County Manager Clarence Grier presented the county’s recommended budget to the commissioners on May 23. 

The new vote came during the meeting following the budget hearing on June 5, after Commissioner Jimmy Keefe made a motion to provide $60,000 to the foundation, instead of zero. The recommended budget allocated “no new funding” to the ASOM Foundation and two other agencies, citing budget constraints. 

In his motion, Keefe emphasized the importance of preserving army and war history.

“Those stories need to be told not only to remember those young men and women who did those things,” Keefe told his colleagues at the June 5 meeting. “But also to educate those who are coming over so that they remember, and they acknowledge [that] if we didn’t remember all the significant things that happened, we would be making the same mistakes over and over again.”

The board of commissioners voted 5-2 against Keefe’s motion, with Keefe and Commissioner Michael Boose casting the votes in favor of the funding. 

At the hearing, the vast majority of speakers — supporters of the museum and members and employees of the foundation — made desperate pleas to the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners for more funding. 

Sterling McCormick, U.S. Army veteran and Army volunteer at the museum, emphasized that volunteers like himself often provide dining, shopping and activity suggestions to tourists who come to the museum, which supports the health of downtown Fayetteville. 

“The ASOM is the number one tourist attraction and an important link between the Fayetteville-Cumberland County area and Fort Liberty,” McCormick told the board. “I can think of no other activity in our area that has bus loads almost on a daily basis.”

The county commissioners ultimately provided the foundation with $25,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funds this year for science and technology educational programming, though this was awarded prior to the county’s budget approval. 

Commissioners’ response

During the June 5 commissioners’ meeting, Adams argued denying funding for the foundation “doesn’t impact the museum” and the general fund money given to the foundation was not meant to continue “in perpetuity.”

“I want people to understand that this doesn’t impact the museum,” Adams said. “This is a foundation. This is not the museum. This money is not to keep the museum open. The museum is going to be open regardless, because the government pays to keep this museum open.”

Other county commissioners said they rejected the funding request over concerns about “fairness” in funding some nonprofit organizations, but not others. There was some debate and confusion among county commissioners during the meeting about an internal rule they had made to not provide general funding to nonprofits who had already received ARPA funds. 

Commissioner Toni Stewart said this was a “hard rule,” and claimed Keefe had come up with it. 

“It was a hard rule, and I want to say that it was a hard rule that you initiated,” Stewart said at the meeting. “I think that it came from you. And I think that it’s unfair to say it’s not a hard rule when people have been rejected for receiving money.”

Keefe replied that, had the rule been rigid and advertised to the nonprofit, he was “not sure most people would have” applied for the ARPA funding. 

In response to a CityView inquiry as to where the ARPA funding rule came from, county spokesperson Diane Rice said it had originated in a budget work session last year. At the time, Keefe raised concerns about nonprofits who had not applied to receive ARPA funds but had applied for general funds. Stewart then suggested that if nonprofits were getting funded through ARPA, they shouldn’t be eligible for general funds as well. There was no official motion made.

Regardless, the commissioners broke this internal rule when they provided the Child Advocacy Center with $1,000 in general fund money, despite also giving that organization ARPA money earlier this year. The other two nonprofits who had received ARPA money and requested general funds — the ASOM Foundation and the Partnership for Children of Cumberland County — did not receive any budget funding. 

Lane said she received no indication on the ARPA grant or in communications with the county about this funding rule for the ASOM Foundation.

“There’s nothing that we have found in any of the information that was sent to us that if we applied for that county annual budget community funding grant, we wouldn’t be eligible for one or the other, because the ARPA really was specifically for Covid-19 relief,” Lane said. “It was not for annual programming, operational relief, that sort of thing.”

Lane said while the county’s funding denial was a setback, the foundation has other sources of funding it can draw from. 

“The county has been very generous,” she told CityView. “We know that there are some restrictions on what they can do this year. If a grant program opens in the future, we’ll take a look at it. Will we need it? I don’t know. I don’t know what the future is going to look like. But, like I said, we have other sources of funding, and we don’t rely on them 100% for an award.”

The city of Fayetteville allocated $56,250 for the foundation, according to the fiscal year 2024-25 city budget. That amount is consistent with the past several years, budget records show. 

Fayetteville’s budget also includes revenue the city attains from providing maintenance and custodial services at the museum for the Army. 

Potential impact on tourism 

The museum is a popular destination for tourists and locals — as of the end of 2023, the museum has surpassed 3 million visitors since its opening in 2000, Lane said.

Retired Gen. Dan McNeill, a longtime donor and supporter of the museum and a foundation board member, said the museum has “anchored the revitalization of downtown Fayetteville” and emphasized its importance to tens of thousands of veterans and military families in the city and county. 

“I simply want to remind you, like it or not, this is a military community,” McNeill told the board during its budget hearing meeting. “The economic engine for many years has largely been driven by Fort Bragg, now called Fort Liberty. It keeps a lot of people working. This museum is a legacy to the remembrance of those who gave their all.”

Foundation board member Mac Healy said the absence of tourism revenue from people visiting Fayetteville to go to the museum could cause problems for the county’s budget later on. 

“A couple hundred thousand more people not coming into this town is detrimental, incredibly detrimental to us,” Healy told the board.

Lane said the foundation will continue applying for grants and looking for new fundraising opportunities to fulfill operating expenses. 

“I always find the silver lining,” Lane told CityView. “And so there’s one ahead — I know there is. And we’ve had challenges before, and we’ve overcome them, and this is just one more that we are going to conquer and succeed.”

This story was updated on July 8, 2024 to reflect the cost of the preservation and restoration of the ASOM foundation’s statues, the positions of Sterling McCormick and Gen. Dan McNeill and the number of seats in the museum theater.

Contact Evey Weisblat at eweisblat@cityviewnc.com or 216-527-3608. To keep CityView Today going and to grow our impact even more, we’re asking our committed readers to consider becoming a member. Click here to join.