Dear Friend,

I just wanted to express my deepest gratitude to you for caring so much about protecting our country’s most significant historic places.

Champions for preservation made our year-end campaign a success and helped us meet our goal! And their support helped us make up for revenue we lost in 2020 due to the enormous repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It was a challenging year, no doubt. But I like to take this time at the start of a new year to focus on the positive, and there are many things I am grateful for.

I am grateful for the accomplishments we made last year, including:

• protecting Nina Simone’s childhood home from demolition and ensuring that the humble origins of a legendary artist inspire visitors for decades to come;
• celebrating the “Edith” at Farnsworth House with an exceptional new exhibit that brings the talented Edith Farnsworth to life; and
• awarding more than $5 million in grant funding to help Americans preserve the places where our history happened.

I’m also grateful for our new initiatives, including:

• launching a multi-year campaign to bring the very best thinking and expertise to the National Mall Tidal Basin, which faces daily flooding, unstable sidewalks, outdated visitor facilities, and even threats to the iconic cherry trees’ roots;
• broadening Americans’ understanding of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, to encompass all five communities where parents fought for school desegregation; and
• celebrating women’s history by reinterpreting National Trust Historic Sites and engaging Americans to uplift 1,000 places—and counting—where women played influential roles in every chapter of American history.

And I am most grateful for the tremendous support we’ve received from you, our historic preservation family. Without you, none of the work we do would be possible.

We are eager to get to work and continue to save more historically significant places in 2021—fueled by the generosity and vision of friends like you.

Gratefully,

PS: If you did not get a chance to contribute to our year-end campaign and you’d still like to give, you can make a gift here to help save places and the important stories they tell.