The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., posted a net profit of $3.89 million in 2015, according to its recently filed federal tax return, extending a period of improved financials for the baseball shrine.
The profit for the year ending Dec. 31, 2015, marked the second straight year in the black, and just the fourth profitable year in the last 14 years. The hall generated $7.8 million in profit in 2014, largely because of a successful commemorative coin program with the U.S. Mint tied to the hall’s 75th anniversary.
With the coin program complete, the hall’s total revenue fell from $18.8 million in 2014 to $14.9 million in 2015, but contributions and grants more than doubled during the year to $5.98 million thanks to a surge in individual donations. Nonprofit accounting guidelines call for multiyear charitable contributions to be recorded in the year they are pledged, as opposed to when they are received, but the 2015 figure for contributions and grants is the hall’s largest since 2007.
The hall also received in 2015 nearly $500,000 in additional money from its Friends of the Hall of Fame membership program, and a $300,000 payment for content, design and consulting services associated with the technology-driven Hall of Fame Tour that began last year in several Midwest markets and is slated to resume this year.
Jeff Idelson, hall president since early 2008, earned $405,381 in total compensation during 2015, up 3 percent from the prior year.
The hall on Wednesday will announce voting results from the Baseball Writers Association of America for its 2017 inductees. A run of large, popular induction classes has translated to better overall attendance and induction weekend crowds.
