In the autumn of 1919, however, a city-wide campaign for an addition of one million dollars to the endowment fund was launched.

The amount was not only secured, but oversubscribed.
Thus, instead of a guarantee fund, contributed by thirteen hundred subscribers, with the necessity for annual collection, an endowment fund of one million eight hundred thousand dollars, contributed by fourteen thousand subscribers, has been secured; and the Philadelphia Orchestra has been promoted from a privately maintained organization to a public institution in which fourteen thousand residents of Philadelphia feel a proprietary interest.

It has become in fact, as well as in name, "our orchestra.".