About me
For over forty years, Susan has worked as an art conservator in both the United States and Europe and as a fundraiser for museums, universities and other historical agencies. Her fundraising background includes extensive experience writing proposals and administering grants and gifts, with a strong focus on raising funds from foundations or government agencies. Her successful proposals have ranged from $5,000 to $1.5 million; many have been renewals. In addition, she has assisted clients by facilitating strategic plans, developing fundraising plans, conducting development audits, providing board training, assisting with board development, and teaching workshops on general fundraising practice and grantwriting.
Susan gained her knowledge of conservation and historic preservation through positions held at the Morgan Library, the Smithsonian Institution, National Gallery of Art, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates (now H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture) and as administrative conservator/development officer and adjunct professor of conservation at the Conservation Center, IFA, New York University. She has held development positions at the National Academy Museum, the American Academy in Rome and the American Museum in Britain. She has a Master of Arts in Museum Studies and Textile Conservation from the Fashion Institute of Technology and a Certificate in Fund Raising from New York University. She currently serves as a member of the Textile Conservation Lab Visiting Committee, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is past Vice President of the Historic Districts Council, and is a past Board member of the North American Textile Conservation Conference and the Textile Specialty Group of the American Institute for Conservation.
SAM Fundraising Solutions Corp. specializes in fundraising and strategic planning for art conservation, historic preservation, and collections care. Services provided include strategic and fundraising planning, prospect research, grant writing, board development, and training and teaching. President Susan Mathisen has numerous years experience seeking support for local, national, and international projects ranging from the conservation of an individual artifact of local significance to the preservation of permanent collections by a team of internationally recognized conservation experts.
To us, the conservation and preservation of an object or building is about much more than the actual act of restoration itself. It’s about how that treatment can contribute to our understanding of the world around us. It’s about how it can impact a community. It’s about how it can foster economic development. It’s about how it can engage with others. This is what we convey in requests to funders – that a conservation treatment is so much more than preserving the historic past. It’s contributing to the future as well.
Our understanding of our historic, cultural, and artistic past doesn’t always start at home. That is why we are dedicated to assisting European organizations build their presence in the United States, making their stories more accessible to a broader audience.
