The Scandinavian American Cultural & Community Center

The Scandinavian Heritage Foundation's (SHF) mission is to preserve authentic traditions, languages and culture while celebrating modern Scandinavian life of the five Nordic nations –Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. To do this SHF manages an ambitious schedule of lectures, classes, and cultural and business events independently and in collaboration with Portland State University and over 30 diverse Scandinavian organizations.

This is a significant job for an organization that is housed in a very small cottage situated on the 2.5 acres of land, which it owns and where it proposes to build a Scandinavian American Cultural & Community Center. Because there is no space for its growing number of activities, SHF must hold events and programs off site at various locations throughout the region. With this limitation in mind, the Board of Directors has determined that it must provide a central facility to house those events, to harbor the artifacts and materials, to allow for office space and to become a visible and concrete center for Nordic organizations.

In 2008, our plan was to build a 24,000 square foot Cultural Center with an estimated cost of $4.5 - $5 million, with a projected construction cost escalation of 12 percent.

However, early in 2008, we saw a significant and sudden change in the fundraising climate and that has continued to now. To date we have raised in grants, pledges, cash and other contributions about $1,330,000, including $100,000 from the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation. A portion of that has paid for our capital campaign, studies and architectural work to date. The total falls short of the $5 million cost to build a 24,000 square foot building.

With a desire to move this project forward as quickly as possible and to raise the energy level in our community, the Board of Directors approved on June 8, 2009, a reduction in size to approximately 11,000 square feet, with an additional 5,000 square feet of storage and archive space. The cost of the building, according to S.M. Andersen Construction, is $2.6 million. With permitting, additional studies, the cost to raise the needed capital and the current costs, our new budget is $3.6 million.

The 24,000 square foot building we have planned to build will be added in one or more future phases.

Our new objective is to break ground on this newly designed building much sooner. We believe this reduction in size and cost will motivate donors and the community to give today when interest rates, construction, material and labor costs are much lower.

The organization continues to expand the number of programs, projects and events it offers the entire community, not just the Scandinavian community, so the impact of not building has been significant. We continue to offer our programs in other venues in Oregon and Southwest Washington, for which we pay rent, rather than at our own facility. We look forward to opening the new building and holding our events on site.

The New Building Design
To determine what the smaller building would look like, a committee of the Board of Directors did a needs assessment to determine what parts of the current building meet certain criteria. Those criteria were:
 Program requirements
 Donor requirements
 Income generated by each aspect of the building so the building is self-sufficient
The redesigned building is very similar to the current design and meets the needs of programs, donors and income.

The new building includes (see drawing):
Great Hall - no change in size or design, which has design elements of a Norwegian Stave Church
Terrace - remains the same
Cafe - moved to the area overlooking the terrace to combine the cafe and outdoor seating area. We believe this new cafe design will attract more people and make the Cultural Center a place where people will want to have coffee and lunches, and eventually dinners, all with a Nordic theme.
Offices - remain the same
Lobby - will also be our exhibit space. Although we have reduced the size of our exhibit area slightly, we have a more compact area that can now include the Great Hall and Cafe for exhibits. This may limit slightly the types of exhibits we can use as exhibits travel the West Coast, but most exhibits will still fit our space.
Reading Library - the library and genealogical center will be included in a future phase, but the very large and flexible Reading Library will hold books and computers (the Scandinavian Genealogical Society will help design this aspect) and also serve as a meeting room and Board Room.
Cafe Kitchen - although we had considered reducing the size of this kitchen, we kept it at the same size in order to maintain the income it provides as a Cafe kitchen and as a kitchen for our catering service to Great Hall events.

The entry and outdoor areas will remain the same.

And finally, here is our work plan to accomplish the fundraising. Much of the first four items of the work plan are completed or nearly completed and we are working diligently on the remaining

1. Ensure 100% Board participation in support and giving
2. Apply to additional foundations
3. Create new marketing materials
4. Work with current donors to:
a. verify naming opportunities
b. verify pledges and timing
c. expand donor pool
5. Work with potential donors
a. revisit those with established relationships
b. visit new donors beginning with top 5 and working down list
c. as we visit, create new market study
6. Approach more corporations
7. Develop a borrowing strategy

We will continually revisit our plan and our successes. We hope to reach Phase IV of the campaign (80% of fundraising complete) as soon as possible. It all depends on you!