The New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame is looking for more funding and believes it is falling between the cracks of sports funders and museum backers.
The hall made a loss of $32,747 in the past financial year up to the end of June, and was forced to dip into its reserves.
Hall of Fame board of governors chairman John Beattie said in the Hall's annual report it was pursuing possible additional avenues of support with the Ministry of Arts, Culture and Heritage and Sport New Zealand.
It had not managed to get funds from either government agency yet.
''Part of our frustration at making progress is, as we see it, because the Hall is itself seen as neither the sole responsibility of sports funding structures such as Sport New Zealand and not it is seen as the responsibility of the Ministry of Arts, Culture and Heritage, the government entity responsible for funding museums,'' he said.
''Our view is that we can enjoy joint stewardship but that if we were forced to choose we would choose the latter, as ... the wider community and our stakeholders and honoured members in particular see us as a museum with a unique induction capacity.''
Beattie said museum officials in New Zealand did not share that view and the change in attitude would take time.
Sporting museums overseas enjoyed funding from government agencies which financed museums and Beattie said the switch had happened around major sporting events.
Beattie said with the British and Irish Lions touring in 2017 it could be an opportunity to try to get changes in government funding.
He said Minister of Sport Jonathan Coleman was aware of the issue and was assisting.
Prime Minister John Key had visited the Hall, situated in the Dunedin Railway Station, early last year.
Hall chief executive Ron Palenski said Key was enthusiastic about the Hall.
The issue was to translate verbal support from the politicians into contractually binding hard cash.
''We see in other sports a lip service acknowledgement of their history; that should not happen nationally and we do not believe it will,'' Palenski said.
Palenski said if the Hall was to close there would be no organisation left to remember the people and sports in which considerable amounts of taxpayer money were invested.
''The government is rightly concerned with the immediacy of sporting success; it should also be concerned with ensuring a legacy from that success endures. And that is our role.''
The Hall had income of $176,774 but received $50,000 less from Sport New Zealand, although Palenski said that was more to do with the timing of a grant.
It has reserves of $59,704, so can ill afford to have too many more years of losses.
