About Save Ellis Island
Save Ellis Island is the National Park Service fundraising and programmatic non-profit partner for the rehabilitation of the twenty-nine remaining buildings on Ellis Island, with the mission and mandate to raise the funds necessary to create and sustain, within these buildings, the Ellis Island Institute and Conference Center.
Established in 1999, Save Ellis Island has achieved considerable success in raising public awareness about the south side, building a professional campaign organization that will lay the foundation to mount a national fundraising campaign. Through its advocacy work and public awareness campaign, Save Ellis Island has helped to secure millions in federal and state funds with private donations to stabilize nearly all of the structures, complete the rehabilitation of the Ferry Building, Connecting Corridors and Laundry/Hospital Outbuilding and implement programming related to the vision of the Ellis Island Institute.
The Ellis Island Institute and Conference Center, to be developed and managed by Save Ellis Island, will provide an ideal venue for civic discussion of issues that arise from the historic themes of Ellis Island having strong resonance with the public today, both nationally and internationally. Topics such as human migration, tolerance, cultural diversity, and public health will be brought to a broad audience through conferences, lectures, retreats, symposia, workshops, special exhibits, family programs, and themed festivals.
The need to preserve and re-purpose the twenty-nine unrestored buildings on Ellis Island is not just about rehabilitating and restoring abandoned buildings, but that it is also about the ways in which those buildings will be used to fulfill important new goals and objectives bringing new life to a powerful symbol of America’s national ethos of freedom and opportunity and giving it relevance to a much more diverse audience of citizens and visitors than ever passed through its doors a century or more ago. Ellis Island is about our national immigration narrative, but that narrative is shared by millions more than those who can trace a relative directly through Ellis Island and the campaign for Ellis Island plans to bring that narrative, broadly interpreted, to all.
