Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. I heard back to the message I left via contact form, and learned that I received one of the last batch of invites, written before the very recent reopening of the Library. I still hate the language of the solicitation, but I’m glad to learn it’s legitimate. I have used two Presidential libraries in my academic research (Kennedy and Johnson), and the idea that one would be used in a scam really upset me.
I received mail today under the name of Clifton Daniel Truman, oldest grandson of Harry S. Truman, inviting me to contribute to a $20 million overhaul of the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum. Five pages long in all, with statistics about how little millennials know about history and how much we can learn from Truman, something didn’t feel quite right about it.
It claimed that all the funding for the renovations would be private. This seems strange for a Presidential library. It talked about how my name would be in some leather-bound book that would be there at the grand-reopening. And while the envelope bearing the mail had the address of the Truman Library Institute, nonprofit partner of the Library, I was supposed to mail my money to an address in Merrifield, Virginia.
Naturally, I went to the Truman Library Institute website. There I found that the capital campaign was never for $20 million, but initially for $25 million, increased to $33 million. www.trumanlibraryinstitute.org/…
The Museum and Library have already reopened. The capital campaign received over $2.5 million from the State of Missouri, and another $2.5+ million from the National Archives and Records Administration, both obviously governmental bodies. www.trumanlibraryinstitute.org/…
Did I receive this “Exclusive Invitation” for being a Democrat? Maybe, but it wasn’t pitched in a partisan way. But I suspect many Daily Kos readers might receive this “invitation,” and it sure looks like a scam to me. I’ll be calling my state’s attorney general in the morning.