President – Richard Moriarty

Founded in 2006, the Carnegie Discoverers is the realization of the desire to develop a voluntary support base for Carnegie Museum of Natural History. The Carnegie Discoverers' primary purpose is to assist the museum in promoting its cultural, scientific, and education missions as well as in its efforts to develop new and larger audiences for the institution.

Members of the Carnegie Discoverers, through a variety of scheduled events each year, are given the opportunity to explore and gain knowledge about the many amazing facets of the museum and its work.  These events afford Discoverers the chance to meet and to learn directly from members of the museum’s world-class scientific and education staff.  Additionally, many of the events are coupled with behind-the-scene tours of collections rarely seen by the general public.

In addition to the Discoverers events, members have the opportunity to attend other exclusive museum events including excursions and openings of new exhibitions. While the members of the Discoverers are welcome to attend as many of these events as they wish, attendance is totally elective.

As a major part of its mission, the Carnegie Discoverers has developed several programs through which additional financial support can be provided to the museum:

• The Wish List program provides the museum’s scientific and education staff members with an annual opportunity to request funding for items or services that would assist them in their museum endeavors.  The cost of the requested item cannot exceed $2,500. A committee comprised solely of members of the Carnegie Discoverers reviews the requests, and committee-approved requests are submitted to the membership for possible funding. From the 2008 inception of the program through 2011, 39 requests have received funding totaling approximately $67,000 or, on the average, $1,717 per request. Museum staff members whose requests were funded in the previous year are invited to an annual Discoverers “Show and Tell” event, where the staff members detail what was accomplished with the funding that they received.  This event is always an amazingly informative and, at times, emotional occasion. 
  
  
• In October 2010, the Carnegie Discoverers initiated its Special Project program, in which a special item or program is selected to be acquired or supported for the museum.  At its initial meeting, the Special Project committee, again comprised solely of Discoverers members, recommended that the Discoverers fund the acquisition of a new projection system to replace the outdated and poorly functioning system presently in operation in the museum’s Earth Theater.
  As of March 2011, the goal of raising the $60,000 needed to acquire the new projection system is less than $3,000 shy of completion.

In summary, the Carnegie Discoverers provides the opportunity to learn more about, explore further within, gain a deeper appreciation of, and, when possible, provide fiscal support to Carnegie Museum of Natural History.  

Richard Moriarty, President

Additional information about Carnegie Discoverers activities can be found at the following links:

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Dramatic Carnegie Museum exhibit due for the top of the table

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Carnegie Museum's research kept going by donations, volunteers

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Private donors supply scientists with crucial tools for research

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Carnegie gets big donation from hospital

Photo: Carnegie Discoverers (left to right) Dave Hairhoger, Betty Mertz, and Gerri Weiss enjoyed refreshments prior to beginning their tour of the museum’s Alcohol House, Bird Collection, and Hall of African Wildlife as part of the January 2009 event.