Gifts & Goals

Annual Operating | Capital | Endowment

Sustaining Current Programs

The Huntington must continue to build robust support in annual giving, the lifeblood that sustains the institution's core mission of education and research every single day. These gifts provide the means to operate the institution: to run education programs, mount special exhibitions, provide fellowships, and properly care for the collections. Annual gifts, both restricted and unrestricted, provide the many resources the institution needs to serve some 14,000 school children and teachers, 1,800 scholars, and 500,000 visitors every year. For example:

It costs about $69,000 to run the institution each day - a total of about $25 million per year. Annual gifts help pay the necessary daily expenses -- from water bills to alarm systems to rare book conservation, gallery lighting, tree pruning, and more -- enabling The Huntington to open its gates each day.

Nearly 70 percent of the Huntington's operating budget goes toward salaries and benefits. Annual giving directly supports everyone from curators to gardeners to administrators.

The Huntington's free school tour program serves more than 14,000 students and teachers every year, from throughout Los Angeles County, as well as San Diego, San Bernardino, and Ventura counties. Teachers choose program offerings in the Art Galleries, Gardens, and Library that are linked with local, state, and national curriculum standards. These education programs are supported in large measure by annual giving.

Strengthening the Physical Foundation
The Huntington began as an estate and remains one today. Anyone entering the grounds is transported to an oasis of beauty largely absent from our modern urban landscape.

Henry Huntington was a pioneer into the wilds of California; he packed up his exquisite East Coast libraries and shipped them via rail to this new frontier because he believed in its power and potential. “I traveled east, north, and south from one end of the state to another. I came to the conclusion then that the greatest natural advantages, those of climate and every other condition, lay in Southern California and that is why I made it my field of endeavor,” he said in 1908.

Under the direction of architect Myron Hunt, the Huntington residence -- now the Huntington Gallery -- was designed in the style of an Italian villa, centered on a working agricultural estate and surrounded by pleasant gardens. Hunt was an early innovator of California architecture and the former Huntington home is considered to be of major architectural significance.

The institution, however, has not been able to keep up with the relentless degradation caused by the effects of sun, rain, and the passage of time. Major repairs and maintenance of the facilities and grounds have been under-funded, deferred, or undertaken only on an emergency basis. Through its strategic plan, the institution underscored its commitment to restoring the Huntington Gallery; the house is, in a sense, the fundamental work of art “collected” by Mr. Huntington at the San Marino Ranch.

Updating the original Library, particularly its electrical system, and renovating the aging infrastructure and hydraulic system of the Gardens – ensuring efficient storage and management of precious water resources -- are equally critical.

The Huntington is also a place to learn about and appreciate landscape design, from the craggy beauty of the Desert Garden to the roaring cascade of a Jungle Garden waterfall. The planned Chinese Garden will present a rare opportunity in California to study the landscape architecture and culture of a 3,000-year-old tradition with a lake, teahouse, pavilions, bridges, and numerous “poetic views” situated in a setting of plants native to China. This garden will complement the Japanese Garden, extending The Huntington’s cultural bridge to Asia that Henry Huntington built so long ago.

Safeguarding the Future
Through wise management, careful investment, and the generosity of generations of donors, the institution has grown Mr. Huntington’s original endowment of $8.5 million to a market value of more than $170 million, which generates income providing some 30 percent of the annual operating budget. The Campaign aims to increase the size of the endowment so that, at a spending rate of 5 percent, it will underwrite at least 50 percent of the annual operating budget over the long term. To that end, almost half the total campaign goal is earmarked for endowed funds that will support in perpetuity the people and programs that make this institution so remarkable.