Protect What Matters Most
While unrestricted donations are always our top priority, these special Targeted Impact Gifts are options for donors who are interested in a larger contribution between $5,000 and $100,000 and wish to restrict their gift toward a special priority need. These opportunities offer a meaningful way to align your gift with the DLC’s high priority needs and inspiring programs we hope to fund in the coming year. Your generosity today ensures our mission thrives tomorrow.
Scroll down to view all giving opportunities, or select a specific category to skip to that section of the list:
Animal Care and Wellbeing
Animal Care Technician apprenticeship position
This program offers recent college graduates the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in the professional care of critically endangered lemurs. This year, the position is especially critical as the DLC has had to reduce its full-time animal care staff by two positions due to Duke’s budget constraints. Funding needed: $48,500.
Motorola R7 handheld radios
These radios allow our staff to communicate quickly and effectively from anywhere on the Lemur Center’s 100-acre campus, including the forested areas. They are essential to maintaining the safety of both lemurs and staff. Funding needed: $45,000 total or $7,500 for five radios.
New computers for animal care team
Computers are critical to our operations, and we have multiple computers that are well beyond their lifespan and need to be replaced. Our curators and technicians use these devices for all animal health and wellbeing recordkeeping, including diets, behavioral observation, social introductions, weights, and medical exams. Funding needed: $15,500
Professional development opportunities
Support our team’s continued growth by funding attendance at professional conferences and workshops. These opportunities help staff stay current with advances in lemur medicine and research and enhance the care we provide every day. Funding needed: $18,000
Facilities and Maintenance
Maintaining our forest free-ranging enclosures
Allowing the lemurs to have forest access is an important part of the DLC’s animal care, wellbeing, and research programs. Maintaining the tree lines and fence lines and predator-proofing ensures the safety of the lemurs while they are in the forest. Your support will help maintain the integrity of the 11 forested, free-range enclosures spanning over 50 acres for the lemurs. Funding needed: $20,000
Welcome and visitor center signage
Our current welcome signage is outdated and in need of updates. New directional signs along Lemur Lane and at key touchpoints—parking areas, check-in, and the tour path entrance—will create a more seamless, welcoming arrival. A free-standing sign at Lemur Landing will also enhance visibility and align with upcoming accessibility improvements. Funding needed: $5,000
Madagascar Conservation
Coquerel’s sifaka conservation breeding collaboration initiative
The Duke Lemur Center is partnering with Madagascar’s Ministry of the Environment to safeguard one of the world’s most endangered primates: the Coquerel’s sifaka. By helping establish animal care standards and cooperative breeding programs in Malagasy private parks, we’re building a global safety net to prevent extinction. To make this possible, DLC staff must travel to Madagascar for site visits—collaborating with park managers, mentoring animal care teams, and supporting conservation leaders on the ground. Your support will fund these critical trips, empowering ethical, science-based conservation and ensuring this iconic species has a future. Funding needed: $26,400
A free-ranging Coquerel’s sifaka at Lemuria Land (Nosy Be, Madagascar) during a site visit in 2024.
Replace our Madagascar truck with a Toyota Hilux 4X4
The DLC’s conservation team in Madagascar needs a new truck to transport equipment and personnel through the SAVA region to support our reforestation and agroecology projects. Given the poor condition of the Malagasy roads, a rugged 4X4 vehicle is needed to navigate through rough terrain. Funding needed: $50,000
Museum of Natural History
Dust collector
The Duke Lemur Center is home to one of only two fossil preparation labs in North Carolina. We go into the field to collect fossils, but the hard work of getting ancient lemurs ready for study really happens in the lab, where we remove the surrounding rock—a delicate process that generates a lot of dust. We train undergraduate students and volunteers to help in the fossil lab, and as we bring in more people, we generate more dust. Funding needed: $11,300
Field work in Wyoming searching for the first lemurs
The story of lemurs begins not in Madagascar, but in the ancient landscapes of Wyoming. Each summer, the DLC Museum of Natural History supports a team of paleontologists, including students, as they search for fossils of early primates and their ancient neighbors—rhinos, horses, carnivores, and reptiles. These expeditions help us understand how primates once thrived in North America, why they vanished here, and how they survived in Africa and Madagascar. It’s a puzzle that reveals the roots of lemur diversity and extinction.
Your support will fund field transport, 4×4 vehicle rental, camping gear, fossil shipments, and advanced scanning—bringing critical pieces of this story to light. Together, we can uncover the past to protect the future. Funding needed: $12,000
Updated specimen cabinets
The DLC Museum of Natural History houses one of the largest collections of Madagascar fossils in North America—an irreplaceable archive that helps scientists around the world understand the island’s dramatic ecological history. These fossils tell the story of species lost to human and climate pressures, including gorilla-sized lemurs and towering, flightless birds. Today, their modern relatives face similar threats. But this vital collection is at risk. Currently stored in outdated wooden drawers, the fossils are exposed to damaging temperature and humidity fluctuations. Drawers stick, specimens shift, and fragile pieces are deteriorating.
With your support, we can replace these aging cabinets with industry-standard, gasket-sealed steel units that protect the fossils from environmental stress and ensure safe, easy access for researchers. This upgrade will safeguard decades of future discovery—advancing conservation science and helping protect Madagascar’s remaining biodiversity before it’s too late. Funding needed: $45,204
Scientific Discovery
Field work studying primate hibernation in Madagascar
By studying wild populations of fat-tailed dwarf lemurs in Madagascar, we gain valuable insights into natural patterns of primate hibernation energetics and body temperature regulation. This fieldwork complements and provides biological relevance to the hibernation research conducted at the DLC. Ultimately, this research offers valuable clues about the potential for inducing hibernation-like states in humans for medical or space exploration purposes. The project cost includes respirometry equipment and supplies, temperature-sensing collars, and round-trip travel to Madagascar and Anjajavy (field site) for the DLC research scientist and a Malagasy Ph.D. student. Funding needed: $33,200
Public Outreach and Education
Educational tour path signage
Additional educational signage along the public tour path will enrich the self-guided experience, improve visitor flow, and ensure that every species and conservation message—from Madagascar to conserving wildlife habitats in our own backyards—has its own moment to shine. Funding needed: $20,000.
New signage would be professionally designed, printed, and mounted to complement our 8 existing tour path signs. The new signage would focus on Madagascar, conservation, and nocturnal species (aye-aye, fat-tailed dwarf lemur, and mouse lemur).
Enhanced accessibility for visitors
Enhance the accessibility of the Duke Lemur Center by establishing an inventory of items available to visitors free of charge, including noise-cancelling headphones, sensory-friendly activity kits, additional seating along the tour path, and portable assistive listening devices. Funding needed: $5,000
Veterinary Medicine
New priorities for this list are pending… stay tuned!
Additional Giving Options
General fund gifts are our top priority right now. These flexible, unrestricted gifts sustain the essentials: staff salaries, facility upkeep, and vital equipment.
For information about gifts of $100,000 or more, please visit our Major and Principal Gifts page.
For a summary of all of our giving opportunities, including stock gifts, corporate sponsorships, legacy gifts, and naming opportunities, please visit our Giving Options page.
Contact
The Duke Lemur Center is always happy to discuss our current priority needs and options for your gift to make a significant impact. Please contact our development officer, Mary Paisley, at mary.paisley@duke.edu or (919) 401-7252.
