Indiana Historical Society

Indiana Historical Society

The Indiana Historical Society was founded in 1830 and operates as a private, nonprofit membership organization. Jody Blankenship serves as President and CEO, while William W. Barrett chairs the Board of Trustees. The organization's presence centers on the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center in Indianapolis, a facility funded in significant part by Glick Philanthropies. The endowment supports the Society's core mission of preserving and interpreting Indiana history, drawing on a portfolio that appears to include a fund-of-funds allocation strategy. The capital base funds operation of the William Henry Smith Memorial Library, which maintains major archival collections: the Cole Porter Collection, IHS Photograph Collection, and a partnership housing The Remnant Trust's rare manuscripts. Programming spans exhibitions, educational outreach, and grantmaking through the Heritage Support Grants initiative, sustained by multi-year philanthropic partnerships with Lilly Endowment Inc. and Glick Philanthropies. The Society's physical footprint is concentrated at its headquarters at 450 West Ohio Street, with ancillary land assets including a parking lot on New York Street. Institutional partnerships extend to the Smithsonian Institution, for which IHS operates as an official Smithsonian Affiliate, and the American Alliance of Museums. Lilly Endowment Inc. stands as a major, recurring philanthropic partner, channeling support to IHS programming and capital projects. Structurally, the IHS endowment is unusual in its direct stewardship of cultural assets — including real property, museum-grade artifact collections, and hosting arrangements for external collections — alongside a financial portfolio that funds both operations and a private grantmaking program. This dual mandate, pairing curator responsibilities with ongoing philanthropic distribution, distinguishes it from a single-purpose investment endowment.