The 9/11 Memorial & Museum’s Never Forget Fund Builds a Case for Teaching Memory to a New Generation
9/11 Memorial & Museum, The Never Forget Fund 25th Anniversary, $75M Campaign, Capital Campaign + Earned Media, Observed June 2026
Organization: 9/11 Memorial & Museum
Interface: Capital Campaign + Earned Media
Lens: Invite Participation
Pattern: Memory Transfer as Fundraising Frame
Key Signal
The 9/11 Memorial & Museum is using the 25th anniversary to raise $75 million for education, with a focus on younger Americans and new educators who have no direct memory of 9/11.
Why It Matters
When people no longer have a personal memory of an event, organizations have to help the next generation understand why it still matters.
Observation
The 9/11 Memorial & Museum is using the 25th anniversary of September 11 to expand The Never Forget Fund, an education-focused fundraising effort created to help future generations understand 9/11. In June 2026, the museum announced a $75 million campaign for the fund, supported by a Bloomberg Philanthropies match of up to $25 million.
The campaign is focused on reaching the roughly 100 million Americans born after September 11, 2001. Nearly 25 years after the attacks, a growing share of the public does not remember that morning directly. The organization’s president and CEO, Beth Hillman, named the challenge plainly: the museum needs a permanent funding source to reach people who did not live through the attacks.
The campaign connects preservation with education. The museum is investing in teacher training, classroom materials, lesson plans, summer institutes for educators, new educational exhibits, free museum access for students, first responders, and veterans, and an annual film updated each year with firsthand accounts. The museum is building a learning pathway for a generation that may not connect to 9/11 with the same immediacy as those who lived through it.
Why It Matters
The campaign makes a clear case: this history will fade from public understanding if it is not actively taught. That changes the fundraising case. The ask is about making sure the next generation has a real way to understand the past. That next generation is also the future audience, donor base, volunteer base, educator network, and public support system for the mission. That is especially important for any organization whose mission depends on memory, proximity, or public understanding. A donor may already believe a mission is important. This campaign adds a sharper reason to act now: the audience is changing, and the organization has to change how it carries the story forward.
The Never Forget Fund is built around that shift. It makes the case that remembrance has to be resourced, taught, updated, and carried into the places where younger audiences are actually learning.
The Broader Pattern
The 9/11 Memorial’s situation is specific. The larger challenge reaches many organizations. The audience that once felt the mission personally begins to age, shift, or disappear. The next audience has to be given enough context to understand why the mission still matters.
Holocaust remembrance organizations are navigating this as survivor generations shrink. HIV/AIDS advocacy organizations are working with generations for whom the height of the crisis is not lived experience. Civil rights and race equity organizations are trying to preserve and teach history in a political environment where some of that history is actively contested.
The lesson is that organizations need to know when their audience has changed. If a mission depends on people understanding something they did not personally live through, the organization may need to build the learning pathway itself. That could look like educator toolkits, classroom partnerships, public learning resources, oral history projects, youth programs, community conversations, or digital materials that make the issue easier to teach and share.
The 9/11 Memorial is building that pathway at national scale. Smaller organizations can build a proportional version of the same idea for their own communities.
Why This Works
The campaign creates urgency through audience change. The message is clear: if 9/11 is not actively taught, fewer people will understand why it still matters.
It connects fundraising to a clear problem: public memory will fade without intentional investment.
It treats education as mission infrastructure. Teacher training, lesson plans, classroom resources, and firsthand accounts become part of how the mission survives.
It gives donors a concrete role. Their support helps carry memory to people who did not live through it.
The campaign creates urgency through audience change. The message is clear: if this history is not actively taught, fewer people will understand why it matters.
That is a strong fundraising frame for any organization facing a similar challenge: Our mission is at risk of disappearing from public understanding, and here is what we are building to stop that.
The Bloomberg match strengthens the campaign because it builds on visible momentum. The first $25 million had already been secured before the match was announced, which signals that the campaign was already moving and that the match could help expand support rather than create momentum from scratch.
What I'm Watching
I’m watching whether more organizations start auditing who their current audience actually is, not who they assume it to be.
For missions rooted in memory, history, lived experience, or public understanding, the question is: who will understand this ten years from now, and what are you building now to help them care, teach, share, and support it?
For fundraisers, the honest question is this: who are the educators, storytellers, partners, and trusted messengers in your community who still have room to carry this story, and are you resourced to reach them?
Source: Campaign details sourced from Associated Press reporting by James Pollard, published June 3, 2026. Reported figures include a $75 million campaign goal, $25 million Bloomberg Philanthropies match, and an estimated 100 million Americans born after September 11, 2001.