Giving Tuesday
This Giving Tuesday, the Virginia War Memorial Foundation is seeking support for some of our most vital programs in 2025.
From exhibitions and stage productions to professional development for our community’s educators, we offer a wide variety of programming that would benefit greatly from your support as we close out the year.
We trust your judgment: we invite you to choose where you would like your gift to make the most impact.
MAKE AN UNRESTRICTED GIFT
Unrestricted giving allows your donation to make an immediate impact.
Unrestricted gifts support our various patriotic, educational, and volunteer programs, as well as the other initiatives listed below. Most importantly, unrestricted donations are able to be used wherever they are needed the most.
GIVE ONLINE
Virginia’s Missing in Action: The Search Continues
Our next marquee exhibit, Virginia’s Missing in Action: The Search Continues will open on National POW/MIA Recognition Day, in September of 2025. This exhibit will highlight the approximately 1,200 Virginians still listed as Missing in Action and the continuing mission to try to identify them and bring them home. Most of us have experienced the loss of a loved one. But for the families of those who have never been found, the prolonged grief and uncertainty amplify the already unbearable hurt.
This exhibit will feature photos, letters, and other archival materials related to those Virginians still Missing in Action, as well as detailed biographies of select individuals. Additionally, the exhibit will explore the scientific process behind searching for and recovering the remains of those individuals by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
Click HERE to learn more about the exhibition and HERE to make a gift towards its production.
Veteran oral histories
For more than two decades, the Virginia War Memorial has collected veteran oral histories. These interviews, nearly 1,300, have been collected in a variety of formats. One of our featured objectives at the Virginia War Memorial Foundation is to get these stories digitized, transcribed, and shared with the public.
Thanks to support from Virginia Humanities and the Alfred I. duPont Foundation, we are well on our way to completing digitization of these interviews. A gift towards our Veteran Oral History initiative will support our next steps of transcribing and hosting our catalog of oral histories online for students, teachers, and researchers of all ages.
To learn more about our oral history program, to sign up to give an oral history interview, or to make a gift in support of this important initiative, click here.
Click HERE to learn more about the exhibition and HERE to make a gift towards its production.
The Public Greenspace Project
The Virginia War Memorial Foundation’s Public Green Space Project aims to transform our grounds into a public green space that offers shady spaces for quiet reflection, the use of native plants and trees, and interpretive signage that will provide context for our Shrine of Memory and extend our educational efforts to explain the service and sacrifice shown by our military in war and peacetime. The project broke ground in the spring of 2024; with hundreds of new Virginia native trees, shrubs, and groundcover plants, and newly-extended hardscaping, the grounds are already more reflective of the solemn nature of our mission.
Our efforts were awarded last year with the Garden Club of Virginia’s Common Wealth Award.
Several member garden clubs have supported the project, as well as many individuals, private foundations and corporations. The planting and hardscaping are nearly finished, but there is still much to be done. That includes benches for visitors and a plant labeling system to identify the many native plants we have used. Also still to be done is a new sound system in the Shrine of Memory which would allow us to play “Taps” every day at sunset, and the installation of outdoor interpretive signage, which would help casual visitors understand the importance of the Memorial.
About a third of our visitors are people who never come inside. There is currently no signage explaining what the Memorial is and that it is open free of charge everyday.
To learn more about the Public Green Space Project, and to make a gift towards our efforts to
complete the project, CLICK HERE.
THE MIGHTY PEN PROJECT
The Mighty Pen Project offers intensive writing classes to help and encourage veterans to commit to paper their memories and reflections that tell the larger story of American military service around the world.
To commemorate ten years of the program, this year we launched the Mighty Pen Podcast as a limited series. This podcast features readings of stories from the Mighty Pen Project archives by professional actors followed by interviews with the authors themselves.
The Virginia War Memorial Foundation has expanded on the Mighty Pen Project to include War in Pieces, a festival of one-act veteran-penned plays. Now in its third year, the festival provides
students with the opportunity to see their written narratives come to life through theatrical productions.
A gift towards the Mighty Pen Project allows Virginia veterans to participate at no cost to them.
To learn more about the program, to read archived stories from the class, or to give a gift towards the Mighty Pen Project, click here.
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR TEACHERS
Strong educators are the backbone of a successful community. Professional development for teachers is a critical tool that allows educators to enhance their skills and adapt to an ever changing teaching environment. It presents educators with a more diverse selection of instructional tools and viewpoints. Most importantly, professional development directly translates to stronger educational performance and student achievement.
Professional Development at the Memorial provides educators with multiple seminars that cover a variety of topics related to Virginia history, and is offered to educators at no cost. These
seminars include the use of materials from the Memorial’s archive and often feature discussions with veterans who lived to experience our nation’s conflicts firsthand. Institutes also incorporate
lectures featuring experts in military history, education, and writing. Teachers who attend professional development at the Memorial not only benefit from the material provided in the seminars, but they are eligible for recertification points towards licensure renewal.
To support the Memorial’s educator-focused programming, click HERE.