- General Purpose: To persuade the audience to take immediate action.
- Specific Purpose: To persuade the audience to take immediate action and donate to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Central Idea: The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a nonprofit organization worthy of donation because of the conservation work it provides, the enrichment attendees get, and the inspiration it provides to its visitors.
Introduction - Step #1 - Attention
- Attention getter: I remember the very first time that I spoke in front of this class, I opened up my speech with this quote from my favorite artist William Haynes. “Life, if you do it correctly, is a piece of art. The best part of art is when you finish it and look at the painting. That’s why death is ok.”
- Reveal the Topic: The reason that I’m bringing this quote up is not to reminisce about the beginning of these last sixteen weeks and think about the fact that our time together is nearing the end, it is to bring up what is at the core of this nonprofit organization: Art. To be more specific, this nonprofit is an art museum that is regularly placed as one of the top ten art museums in the world, it is the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Credibility Material: What makes me qualified to ask you to donate to this museum is that I am an emissary of artistic expressionism and the efforts to conserve it, and totally not just some guy in a speech class trying to fulfill the requirements of a persuasive speech assignment because… That doesn’t sound nearly as cool or fancy. On a serious note though, to erase any of the scruples you may have about why I am trying to sell you on this museum, it’s simply because I enjoy art.
- Preview Statement: I’m here to tell you all a little bit about what the Met brings to the table as a non-profit, and hopefully move you to make a donation.
Main Point I and Sub Points - Step #2 - Need
Main Point I: The Met brings value to society that can be overlooked.
Sub Point A: The Metropolitan Museum of art has to offer something to the world, it had 7.4 million visitors in 2018 alone they must get something from the visit, so what did they get out of it...an enriching experience. There are not many places one can go to view artwork, you can see it online whenever you want but that feels less concrete, so the museum offers an experience that can't be attained from a screen. Whether it is a guided tour or aimless wandering around looking at pieces in the museum, you can witness the beauty of art.
Sub Point B: The Met also offers an educational aspect that has been lacking in recent years in some school systems: art classes. Budget cuts and a focus on subjects that students get tested on have left art programs on the back burner for a number of schools, as a result, some schools offer fewer art classes than they would have in the past, and there are even some schools that offer none at all. That is where the Met comes in, it offers an extensive amount of art classes, and these eight pictured here are just the tip of the iceberg.
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Connective: The Met offers an artistic experience to visitors, art classes to children, and even classes for adults, though it still holds more weight than I let on, and that weight comes from the effect it has on people and the important work it does.
Main Point II and Sub Points - Step #3 - Satisfaction
Main Point II: The Met’s great importance goes beyond holding art classes, and housing art.
Sub Point A: Art itself is just the expression of creativity fueled by emotions and ideas. The Met houses this art, but it is much more than the glorified storage building some people might think it is. Inspire More Stories is located on the museum’s website, telling the stories of some of the people touched by the Met, and aside from these three people here, there are six more pictures of people who were moved and inspired in some way by the art contained in the Met, but these nine lives impacted by the Met are just a drop in the bucket when it comes to the people inspired from the art; all these individuals who were inspired have the potential to inspire others, whether it be through their professional lives, or in their interpersonal relationships. This inspiration that occurs wouldn’t be possible without intact pieces of art available for viewing.
Sub Point B: Take a look at this copper figure, it is around five thousand years old, dated as being created Circa 3000 B.C.; now think about the fact that there are more than two million pieces of art contained in the collections of the Met’s three locations. That is a lot of art that needs to be maintained because not all pieces of art are as sturdy as a copper alloy sculpture so they may have crumbled a little among the sands of time, and that isn’t taking into account all the accidental or purposeful damage caused by, let’s call them energetic museum-goers. The cost of the processes to restore and maintain these works, as well as the equipment involved can be quite expensive, but without a way to fund this maintenance, the pieces that sparked the inspiration that roped in the hearts of many to the art world would eventually be beyond repair, the Met would become a failure, and that immense inspiration would fizzle out and die...wow that got kind of dark.
Connective: Luckily the Met seems to not be a house of broken dreams just yet, and you can keep it from becoming one by donating.
Main Point III and Sub Points - Step #4 -Visualization
Main Point III: Picture what a contribution from you to the Met could mean.
Sub Point A: A donation from any one of us will ease the burden on the shoulders of a museum trying to stay afloat. The Met may seem like an extravagant museum, but for the past few years, the Met has ended its financial year with millions of dollars worth of deficit. The report from this slide details how the Met had a projected deficit of $23 million with an $8 million dollar deficit budget, so they would have been in the red by $15 million dollars. In actuality they ended 2016 with a deficit of $10 million dollars, $2 million over budget sounds like a blessing compared to 15, but consider the fact that these losses have stacked up over the years to result in tens of millions in losses. These losses threw a wrench in the museum’s plans for the future. With a donation from you, your funds can alleviate that debt, and be put to good use. These donations can go to more arts programs, filling the positions of conservators and other staff that was laid off because of the debt, and going to the creation of new art wings.
Sub Point B: You may be wondering how your donations could do that, even if the entire class chipped in whatever they could part with it wouldn’t be enough to achieve any of the things I just listed; but it would be more than enough to assist the cause. The reason that it would be more than enough is that quantity is the catalyst for qualitative change. Just imagine if every single one of the 29,000 students that were enrolled at UMSL in 2018, donated a dollar, that’s already a large amount of money. It doesn’t matter if you donate one dollar while someone else donates one million dollars, each contribution matters, and they matter equally because they build off of each other to become larger than what they were in the beginning. Just think the donation you make may very well inspire the next generation of artists.
Conclusion - Step # 5 - Action
Signal the End: I’m almost out of time, so before I go let me tell you how to donate, and let me tell you the wondrous benefits you get when you donate because everybody loves benefits. If you give a donation of any size to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, you get a free ticket to the Met Gala—wait…..no, this note says, you don’t get a free ticket to the Met Gala, but what you get instead is just as good. If you donate any amount to the Met, that donation is 100% tax deductible, within the parameters of the law, and that coupled with the ego high you’ll be riding for a month afterward is just as good as free Met Gala tickets. Right?
Reinforce the Central Idea: Moving on there are two different sets of steps to donate on the Met’s website, depending on the size of your screen. The first is to simply hit the make a donation option on the top right area of the homepage, and you are brought to the donation page. The second way to donate is to go to the Met’s home page, click on these three stacked bars in the top right corner, click on join and give, click on support the Met, scroll down to the button that says donate to the Met, and after you click on it just follow the instructions and your donation is complete. This will help the Met continue to fulfill the duties that it set out to accomplish.
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