The non-profit organization was established by the New Jersey Hall of Fame Act in September 2005 by the Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey. The New Jersey Hall of Fame aims to publicly recognize the unique achievements of outstanding New Jerseyans. It will be housed in East Rutherford.

The NJ Hall of Fame has just closed its long and highly successful public online voting phase, with the official announcement of the final 25 nominees on the organization’s Web site www.njhalloffame.com. Once Corzine holds his press conference in September, that inductee number will have been reduced from 25 to 15 finalists, all of which will be named and inducted into the very first New Jersey Hall of Fame. A lavish award ceremony will then take place in April or May of 2008, to award the inductees for their excellent achievements.

"On May 2, Governor Jon Corzine was going to announce those 15 people, and then from that point forward we would start to produce our event which is going to be in April or May 2008," said NJ Hall of Fame Board of Trustees Member Steve Edwards. "Unfortunately the governor got into a very unfortunate accident, and so that press conference had to be rescheduled. Now the Governor's office had suggested that we do it in the summer, but people are away in the summer. So we're, in all likelihood, going to be having that press conference in September, but it hasn't been scheduled yet. And that press conference will announce who the 15 inductees are."

The First Annual Induction Ceremony will be modeled after the Academy Awards.

All this costs money, and seeing as the NJ Hall of Fame is a non-profit organization, raising funds to hold a major induction ceremony, together with plans to build a Hall of Fame Museum is no easy task.

"The NJ Hall of Fame relies on private funds," said Edwards. "So all the money that we have raised to date, about $250,000, has come from private sources. J.H. Cohn LLC, the accounting firm has contributed money, as has Sanofi-aventis". Sanofi-aventis is one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, based out of France. "Private anonymous people who want to support the NJ Hall of Fame have contributed money," added Edwards. "But no public funding. We took a pledge, now actual legislation, which created the NJ Hall of Fame that speaks to the fact that we can't take any public funding. We're a non-profit."

The organization plans to utilize revenues obtained from its events and ceremonies to support the funding of the Hall of Fame itself, and also to contribute to charitable organizations that directly benefit children in need in New Jersey, and throughout the world.

"We are really a grass-roots movement with different prominent New Jersey organizations contributing, including Comcast and Cablevision, who have generously aired 30-second commercials for the voting for the NJ Hall of Fame, and free of charge. We have received over 300,000 visits to our Web site, and tens of thousands of visitors have voted in our selection process. Enterprise (car rental) also put 20,000 of our bumper stickers on their cars," said Edwards.

Children are a major focus for the new NJ Hall of Fame, since individuals such as Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Walt Whitman and Woodrow Wilson are significant role models for children in schools throughout New Jersey. "The New Jersey Education Association even put a story of the Hall of Fame on the cover of their publication, with children being encouraged to write essays on their favorite famous New Jersey role models. Thousands of essays were submitted and received, according to the NJEA," said Edwards.

Significant attention has also been given for plans to build a New Jersey Hall of Fame museum in the Meadowlands where children and adults can go and visit exhibitions and interactive displays pertaining to New Jersey’s most celebrated individuals who have been inducted.

"We have a tentative virtual tour of the museum that you can find on our Web site," said Edwards. "We also have an artist's rendering, and are in discussions with a few different developers. Since we are non-profit, it's taking time, and it's going to continue to take time before we make a decision on where it is going to be located. We don't have a site, but the Meadowlands is under consideration. That's the number one location that's under consideration right now, but we're just in discussions, there's nothing formal. We've been out talking to corporate New Jersey, and there's actually an interest. But we can't identify right now where all the money is going to come from. It's a long process to build a museum. It doesn't happen overnight and we are in the very early stages."

"There's actually two Halls of Fame that have worked exceedingly well for the past 30 years, the South Carolina and the South Dakota Halls of Fame," Edwards said. "They both were formed ironically around the same time, in 1974. South Dakota is probably the best model. They have an induction ceremony and a democratic process where folks are selected each year, and we're striving for the same thing."